Last time we sat down with Emma Håkansson, we talked about her work. This time, she’s wearing it. In Berlin, for a film festival nomination, in a jacket made from Amazonian bio-leather, tapped from century-old trees and designed by Brazilian-born designer Serena Coelho.
Here’s Emma for you. Again.
While in town for her Berlin Fashion Film Festival nomination, Collective Fashion Justice’s Emma Håkansson was shot by Very Good Looking‘s Eric Mirbach wearing the Amazonian bio-leather her film features.
Deep in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, the Awajún community use an ancestral practice to collect sap from shiringa trees that stand some forty metres tall and hundreds of years old, without harming the giants.
In Lima, material laboratory Caxacori Studio transforms the sap into a bio-leather: one which benefits the community who is also defending their land against deforestation driven in part by cattle ranching in the leather supply chain.
This material tells a story of resistance to colonization, and of the connection between us and nature. In Berlin, this story is told in the form of a jacket made from shiringa bio-leather, which appears tattooed with imagery reflective of this tale.
Designer Serena Coelho is Brazilian-born, Copenhagen-based, and interested in culture, diversity and evolving culture.
Her jacket was first showcased at Copenhagen Fashion Week, where Collective Fashion Justice held an event screening SHIRINGA: Fashion Regenerating Amazonia, alongside an exhibition of the first European-based designers to work with the material.
SHIRINGA received two nominations at the Berlin Fashion Film Festival, and the film’s director and producer, also the founder of Collective Fashion Justice, wore Coelho’s jacket to the awards night.
A long time friend of Antagonist, naturally she went for a walk along some of Berlin’s beautifully brutalist architecture with the magazine’s co-founder, to capture the look, with styling by Copenhagen-based Frida Staib Hansen.
For more on Emma’s work, visit Collective Fashion Justice:
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