WHEN Letila Mitchell returns to the Style Fiji runway this November, audiences can expect much more than fashion.
An artist, designer, cultural practitioner and storyteller, Mitchell has spent much of her creative journey exploring the connections between culture, identity, movement and contemporary Pacific expression. November marks her second showcase at Style Fiji.
For Mitchell, creativity has never been confined to one medium.
She founded Rako Pasefika in 1998 as a dance and music troupe, and it has since grown into a multidisciplinary Oceanic collective of around 60 members with strong foundations in Rotuman culture. Through dance, music, visual art, fashion and storytelling, Rako has built a platform for celebrating and preserving Pacific cultural knowledge while presenting it in fresh and contemporary ways. The collective has performed at home and abroad, including at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast. That connection between movement, art and fashion has also shaped Mitchell’s work as a designer. Long before she showed collections on fashion runways, she and the Rako team were creating costumes for dancers and performers. Perhaps that is why her approach to fashion feels so closely tied to movement and storytelling. A garment is not simply something to wear; it can become another form of expression.
Mitchell is also an accomplished visual artist, drawing on her Rotuman and Pacific heritage, the natural environment and traditional knowledge. Her work explores cultural patterns and symbolism while bringing those elements into a contemporary space. Rako’s designs are researched through interviews with elders and searches of Rotuman archival material, so that each piece carries that heritage rather than simply referencing it.
Her contribution to arts in Fiji runs wider still. Mitchell is a former director of the Fiji Arts Council and the founder and secretary general of the Pacific Arts Alliance.
Sustainability and the preservation of traditional knowledge sit at the centre of her practice.
Mitchell has spoken of the urgency of that work, warning that much of Rotuma’s tangible culture, its arts, voyaging and architecture among it, risks being lost as elders pass on without their knowledge reaching younger generations.
It is this depth that makes Mitchell such a compelling presence on the Style Fiji runway.
She is difficult to place in one category, and perhaps that is what makes her work so interesting. She is an artist who designs, a designer who understands movement, and a cultural practitioner who continues to find new ways of telling Pacific stories.
In the hands of a designer like Mitchell, fashion becomes more than clothing. It becomes art, movement, culture and storytelling.
Style Fiji 2026, “A midsummer night’s dream”, takes place on Saturday, November 7 from 6pm at the Sheraton Fiji Golf & Beach Resort, Denarau Island, as Style Fiji marks its 15th anniversary. Tickets and tables are on sale now at $350 for tier A and $300 for tier B, available in Suva from Samson Lee’s on Butt St and in Nadi from Rosie Tours at Martintar, or by contacting info@style-fiji.com or 717 4213.
