‘Our lives are documented in the art’: Snuneymuxw design house weaves love and loss into new collection

When Snuneymuxw design house Ay Lelum lost their family patriarch  —  a prominent Elder and master carver who kept his community’s art style alive — their latest collection became a way to both work through their grief but also honour his legacy. 

Dr. William Good ts’usqinuxun passed away two months before his family design house Ay Lelum debuted its latest collection, Bright Stars, on the Paris runway on Oct. 2. The collection will be shown at the upcoming Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week on Nov. 22.

At first, grappling with the enormity of the Elder’s passing during the collection’s creation, his daughter Aunalee Boyd-Good and her mother Sandra Moorhouse-Good thul te lada — also an accomplished fashion designer and artist — were uncertain about how to proceed, but then decided to do what they knew best.

That was to work through their sadness, not as a distraction but as an immersion; a way of dealing with it. And somehow, it helped, says Aunalee. The design house also debuted a new song in Paris.

“When you’re in that much pain … and you do that sort of expression physically, through singing, music, art, there’s so much output of emotions, it’s just — it processes so much for you,” she says.

“And I think it’s like that for everybody, because mom, she’s 81 years old and she was sewing until 10 o’clock the night before we left, making that finale cape.”

Aunalee said it was healing to work with her father’s artwork as well as that of her late brother W. Joel Good ts’usqinuxun, who died suddenly last year. Bright Stars celebrates both William and Joel “as they ascend into the heavens to become bright stars to guide our way.” 

Also an artist and carver, Joel had just turned 40 when he passed in August of 2024, and after decades of apprenticeship at his father’s side, his own unique style had reached a transcendence and mastery that was only beginning to fully take flight. 

The Bright Stars finale cape, walked down the runway by Lakota model Skylar Evans from South Dakota, was designed and sewn by Sandra, and features two yellow stars printed on the back and two eagle motifs on the front: one that is William’s design and one Joel’s.

With bold black and white Coast Salish prints punctuated by shots of yellow, silver, blue and magenta, the Bright Stars collection also features painted designs and couture fabrics like hand spun silk from Cambodia.

When the family lost Joel last year, it was little more than a week before their latest collection was due to open at New York Fashion Week. The family managed to carry through, and dubbed the collection Your Spirit as a tribute.

‘You can’t separate art and history’

Last season, as Aunalee prepared to close out Vancouver Fashion Week , she said her father indicated he wanted to walk with her down the runway, something he had never done before.

She was delighted — after all, Ay Lelum was a family operation, where all members, especially hereditary chief, historian and master carver William, contributed to the designs with their artwork, songs and cultural teachings. 

They hooked arms under the spotlights, smiled at the cheering crowd and began to walk.

“Midway down the runway, I had this awful feeling it was the last time we would ever do it,” she says.

On the way there from their home in Nanaimo, William had seemed unusually tired and something had seemed “off” about his health for a few months.

Unfortunately, William was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer the following month that progressed quickly. He passed away on July 31.

Incredibly close-knit, the family has always existed in a space where there is intentionally little to no separation between what is work, life, art or culture. Aunalee, her brother Joel and her sister Sophia Good grew up in a home that was also an art studio, and much of their childhood was spent at trade shows, sitting in the family station wagon while their parents set up the art booth.

“That’s one of dad’s teachings. He always said, ‘You can’t separate art and history.’ It’s a way of life where everything’s interconnected and woven together,” says Aunalee. “You can’t separate it the same way we can’t separate the music and the language that’s also telling the story and giving you the feeling of what’s happening and the emotion.”

William played a central role in the revitalization of Snuneymuxw traditional art and carving styles, which had been all but lost due to assimilation and colonization. After being told by Elder Leslie John in 1965 that he had dreams and visions that it was William’s destiny to become the next prominent artist, William had embarked on the painstaking task of researching Snuneymuxw art and history through consultations with Elders and research in museums and archives all over North America. 

It wasn’t just traditional artistic styles and methodology he was learning and rediscovering, but a way of storytelling and culture — of marking history — that he then also embodied in his own artwork, says Aunalee.

“When Joel passed away, dad carved a carving that indicates everything that happened at that time in our lives,” she says. His artwork documented the family in great detail — the births and milestones of his grandchildren, Joel’s neckerchief and new grey hairs. At one point he even added a loop to the eye in a carving of Aunalee to indicate where she had gotten a corrective contact lens as a young child.

And in the same way that William’s carvings told the family’s story as they lived it, the connected eagle designs and the pieces that became the newest Bright Stars collection also follow this traditional practice of documenting.

“The art is showing you. When you look at that design, Joel’s is in flight, and dad’s is ascending. It’s just how it happened,” says Aunalee, about the connected eagle designs. “Our lives are documented in the art. But I also allowed the art to show us what we should do.”

‘The love is so strong’

On Oct. 17, the family brought Bright Stars home for an emotional show at Vancouver Fashion Week, where founder Jamal Abdourahman has worked with Ay Lelum since their first show in 2018.

The bond that the Good family have is quite rare in the world of fashion and it’s beautiful, he says.

“The love is so strong. The kids are modeling on the runway, and the aunties designing, fathers pulling something and brothers pulling something, and it’s an amazing example for them to have and to share it with us, with all of us,” says Abdourahman, who also supports independent designers with his organization Global Fashion Collective.

There are also other projects in the works, including a book created in collaboration with the Museum of Vancouver and Figure 1 Publishing that will explore the family’s art practice through the lens of carving, painting and fashion.

“It’s basically looking at all the different types of art production that come out of this one family, and how it’s rooted in Snuneymuwx traditional knowledge,” says Sharon Fortney, who is heading up the project and works as the museum’s senior curator of Indigenous collections, engagement and repatriation.

The book’s publication is planned for the fall of 2026 and an exhibit at the museum that showcased the family’s interrelated artworks in the fields of fashion and art is also in the works for 2028, says Fortney.