“The coat of the age”: the Kul-e-Tuk brand parka, Inuit cultural appropriation and the commercialization of settler Canadian identity

Abstract

Purpose In 1959, the Kul-e-Tuk brand parka made its debut on the Canadian mass-market and was a near-instant commercial success. Promoted as a quintessentially Canadian winter style, the Kul-e-Tuk was in fact appropriated from traditional parkas of Western Arctic Inuit. This study, a general review, aims to delve into the Kul-e-Tuk’s complicated history, the matrix of mid-20th century socio-political and economic factors and settler Canadian identity projects that contributed to it becoming, as the Hudson’s Bay Company (The Star Phoenix, 1959) called: “the coat of the age.” Design/methodology/approach The methodology for this paper includes: archival research focusing on manufacturer and department store advertisements and promotional articles published in newspapers and magazines; object-based study of garments held by Montreal’s McCord Stewart Museum’s Indigenous Cultures and Dress, Fashion and Textiles collections, including extant Kul-e-Tuk brand parkas, sourced and collected by the author from 2020 to 2024 and traditional Inuit parkas; a survey of appropriated Inuit-style outerwear found on vintage resale websites; contemporary research sources to support contextualization and critical analysis. Findings Tracing the complicated history of the Kul-e-Tuk brand and its marketing to consumers reveals that in settler colonial states like Canada, the appropriation of land and cultural belongings function in tandem to eradicate Indigenous people while simultaneously transferring their identity onto, and their resource rich territories into, the hands of settler Canadians. Originality/value This decolonial research broadens understandings of both Canada’s colonial processes at work and the creation of appropriated settler Canadian identity through nationalistic branding practices and the marketing of winter fashion with Indigenous origins during the mid-20th century.