From Suva to the Met

Epeli Tuibeqa opens Fiji Fashion Week with Wasawasa, a collection shaped by ocean, identity and the belief that Pacific stories deserve global space.

Epeli Tuibeqa’s influence reaches far beyond fashion.

Years ago, as I transitioned from quiet writer to highly visible broadcast journalist, I sought out Epeli for something he had already become known for — helping shape the visual language of people entering public life. But more than that, his work as a curator of Indigenous iTaukei visual expression shaped how I understand myself as a Luvei Viti of Gonedau heritage and the quiet authority with which Indigenous stories can occupy public space.

A fashion designer, singer and dancer, Epeli is an accomplished pageant coach whose record includes multiple Miss Fiji and Miss Pacific Islands titles. Yet while his career is centred on fashion design, it is perhaps more accurately described as cultural advocacy.

His commitment to presenting authentic Fijian traditions through cultural art has extended his influence far beyond the runway, reaching into climate dialogue, thought leadership and even the halls of one of the world’s most celebrated institutions, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

A native of Vanua vakaturaga o Nadonumai and of the people of Suvavou, Epeli is an Indigenous Fijian artist who has spent the past 15 years taking Fijian culture from Suva to the world.

Watching From the Wings

After more than a decade presenting his work at Fiji Fashion Week, Epeli now takes his place where many would argue he has long belonged — opening the show among the Pacific’s finest.

But opening Fiji Fashion Week is not something Epeli speaks about lightly.

For years, he watched from the wings, admiring the designers who shaped the industry before him. Caroline, Ako, Rachel Fairfax, Robert Kennedy and Robert Vera Mason were not competitors in his mind, but powerhouses. Their confidence and presence inspired him to imagine what was possible for Pacific designers occupying spaces often treated as peripheral.

“I’ve just been a big fan of them,” he says.

“Seeing these powerhouses move in this space and own it, seeing our people in these international spaces. I know it’s just Fiji Fashion Week, but for me it felt very international.”

For Epeli, opening the show was never meant to arrive through favour.

It was, as he puts it, “my little mountain.”

“I didn’t want to get that spot out of favours,” he says. “I wanted to earn it.”

And so when the invitation finally came, the answer was immediate.

“This year, when the opportunity was given, I said yes. I felt like it was time and that KUIVITI was ready to open Fashion Week.”

That readiness reflects more than a runway milestone. It signals what Epeli describes as a new era for KUIVITI, one that has matured alongside its creator.

For years, KUIVITI became known for spectacle. Massive prints. Fearless colour. Pageant silhouettes and theatrical statements carrying unmistakable Pacific energy. But Epeli now speaks about the label almost as though it were independent of him.

“KUIVITI is its own person,” he says.

“I don’t think we’re connected in any way except that I’m an employee and I pour a lot of my creativity into building the brand.”

It is a striking way of describing authorship, less ownership than stewardship.

That distance, perhaps, comes with maturity.

“I think just maturing and understanding more about who I am as a designer and as a creative, and understanding who KUIVITI is,” he says.

The result is refinement rather than reinvention.

When audiences encounter this new chapter of KUIVITI, Epeli hopes they recognise intentionality.

“That KUIVITI is refined. That we’re leaders, that we are originators.”

He pauses.

“I’m no longer that pageant kid very into designing elaborate outfits.”

Instead, he sees himself stepping deliberately toward a wider audience and a global market while protecting the identity that made the brand recognisable in the first place.

Yet if refinement suggests restraint, spectacle remains untouched.

“Hell no,” he laughs when asked whether his relationship with grandeur has softened.

“I still am a sucker for everything that’s big and grand and majestic because it’s an extension of who we are, an extension of our culture.”

For Epeli, theatricality is not excess but philosophy. It is inseparable from how he understands Pacific identity.

He rejects inherited narratives that diminished Pacific people as small island cultures existing on the margins.

“I always want to crush that ideology,” he says.

“We don’t come from small islands. We come from the largest ocean in the world.”

Wasa

That thinking sits at the centre of Wasa, the collection opening Fiji Fashion Week.

Wasa arrives with the mood of the islands stitched into its DNA. Drawing on woven fibres, natural elements and handcrafted textures, the collection layers earthy palettes with black satin, sequins and organic detail. Ocean tones meet forest, rust and onyx, while sculptural silhouettes and dramatic finishes carry the energy of land, sea and identity. Inspired by heritage but designed for tomorrow, Wasa promises a runway experience that is bold, theatrical and unapologetically Pacific, intended not simply to be seen, but felt.

Taking Up Space

The ocean, he says, is more than colour and movement.

It is sustenance. Strength. Depth.

“Like the Pacific Ocean, we take up space,” he says.

“We are majestic like the ocean. We are deep too.”

Living and working in the United States has sharpened, rather than diluted, that conviction.

For years, Epeli imagined KUIVITI appealing more broadly to international audiences. Yet the brand, he says, had already become something larger than his own ambitions.

“KUIVITI became its own person,” he says.

“The customers know KUIVITI for the massive prints, the bold colours and crazy colour combinations.”

He laughs at the memory of unlikely pairings.

“Recently I did pink and lime green together. Don’t ask me how I came up with that, but everybody loved it.”

The real shift came in Utah.

It was there, at Utah Pacific Fashion Week, that Epeli felt KUIVITI stepping beyond the category of local label.

“Afa didn’t have to invite KUIVITI to Utah,” he says. “He didn’t have to organise that NBC interview with Mena. But he did.”

What followed became a moment of recognition.

“Being in that NBC studio and talking about our culture and seeing designers like Mena, whose work shaped the direction I wanted for KUIVITI, sitting just seats away from me, was insane.”

“That was a real pinch myself moment.”

Fashion With Purpose

And perhaps more importantly:

“That was when I really saw KUIVITI becoming much bigger than even me because it was the brand being invited, not just Epeli.”

That distinction matters.

Because while international audiences often encounter Pacific fashion as beauty or spectacle, Epeli insists they misunderstand its purpose.

“I think international audiences always assume we just make pretty things for the runway,” he says.

“But our work is storytelling.”

Masi was never created to hang in galleries.

Carvings were never made for museum display.

They were functional. Living. Embedded in ceremony, livelihood and daily life.

“Our art was always made for a purpose,” he says.

“We don’t just make beautiful clothes. We tell stories.”

The same principle applies to what the world misunderstands about Pacific creativity more broadly.

“People still think our work is commercial, just made to be admired,” he says.

“But our pieces were made for livelihood.”

That sense of responsibility sits heavily with him.

“Yes,” he says when asked if representing Fiji internationally feels different now.

“Because we can’t all be rugby players or journalists.”

“I want to represent Fiji to the best of my ability and not just be a voice on the side that does nothing. Everything I do is to tell the stories of Fiji and give back to Fiji in that way.”

The pressure of international spaces, he admits, can be disorienting.

His remedy is disarmingly simple.

“Copious amounts of kava,” he laughs.

“And honestly, good friends.”

Friends, he says, who remind him of his why and refuse to let ambition distort identity.

New York

That grounding proved essential the day he entered one of the world’s most revered cultural institutions.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“It was like any other Tuesday,” he says.

Then came the call.

Navi could not make it.

They needed him in New York.

“When I got to the bottom of the Metropolitan Museum steps, I froze.”

He laughs softly.

“I even took off my shoes because I wanted to feel the cold concrete and remind myself that I was really standing there.”

All the Met Gala imagery he had grown up watching rushed into memory.

Beyoncé.

Rihanna.

Yet inside, something quieter emerged.

Every other international space had carried familiarity, the knowledge that Pacific people had walked there before him.

The Met felt different.

“I felt reserved because I was overwhelmed.”

The Roman galleries.

The Egyptian collections.

The Japanese kimonos.

“I was just a sponge soaking in all the inspiration and mana from different cultures.”

The experience unsettled him emotionally.

“Living in the US still hasn’t fully settled in my mind and then suddenly you’re standing in the Metropolitan Museum.”

He searches for words.

“It felt like the mecca of creativity for me.”

And then:

“It humanised a lot of my dreams.”

The Work of Remembering

Perhaps the most enduring lesson was not artistic, but personal.

“It taught me never to feel small and never to feel shy about occupying space.”

For a fleeting moment he questioned whether he belonged there.

“Who am I to be walking through here coming from Fiji?”

But the answer came quickly.

“Our ancestors were warriors.”

“Pacific people deserve to occupy these spaces too.”

That instinct toward memory and belonging runs through much of Epeli’s work.

His grandmother remains central.

“Every single day,” he says when asked if he still thinks about her while designing.

“I think she’s the real muse of KUIVITI.”

He remembers cupboards filled with dresses preserved across decades.

Aunties dressing carefully.

Garments surviving fashion cycles and remaining beautiful.

“That’s why a lot of my pieces are timeless,” he says.

“They can look good on your grandmother, your mother or your sister.”

And movement matters too.

Everything, he says, is choreographed.

Dance taught him how fabric moves.

Music taught him how garments become alive.

“The placing of the models matters. The order matters.”

Because KUIVITI, from the beginning, was never merely fashion.

“Very early,” he says.

“KUIVITI has always been about cultural storytelling.”

That belief carries responsibility.

Pacific designers, he argues, work between fantasy and reality while remaining accountable to culture.

“We always have to remain truthful to culture so we don’t appropriate our own traditions.”

His concern for the future is equally clear.

“That major fashion capitals will take our stories and not do them justice.”

“If you’re going to honour Pacific culture, do it properly. Go all the way.”

Fashion, like language and music, preserves memory.

“Absolutely,” he says.

“You see certain fashion and instantly remember a whole era.”

The dream now is expansion.

Boutiques in Fiji and the United States.

A luxury label with wider accessibility.

And beyond fashion, education.

Mentorship.

Cultural spaces for Pacific children overseas disconnected from home.

“I want to create spaces where they can learn protocols, storytelling and cultural identity.”

Success, meanwhile, has become harder to define.

“Honestly, I don’t know anymore.”

Each milestone gives way to another.

Legacy

For now, success is simpler.

“We’re alive, paying bills, the brand is doing well and people genuinely love KUIVITI.”

And perhaps that is what makes KUIVITI distinct.

Beneath the fabric, choreography and spectacle lies something older than fashion itself.

Not simply clothing.

But cultural memory moving.

It is why Epeli speaks less about garments than he does about belonging. Why the work reaches beyond aesthetics into identity, stewardship and remembrance.

For all the global ambition, the boutiques still imagined and the runways still ahead, his work remains anchored in something profoundly local and deeply personal.

His grandmother.

His vanua.

His faith.

His people.

And perhaps that is the quiet power of Epeli Tuibeqa.

Not simply that he designs beautiful things, or that his work has travelled from Suva to New York and beyond, but that he has spent years helping Indigenous stories occupy public space with confidence and dignity.

Epeli Tuibeqa.
Designer. Cultural advocate. Teacher of sorts.