Welcome, Emma. What’s your day been like so far?
Thanks for having me. The day has been on the computer, looking at a lot of creative references: runway looks where fabric manipulation could mimic harmful ostrich feathers. Which is nice because often, it’s a lot of numbers and the more technical side of sustainability. So it’s nice when I get to think about the innovative, beautiful future of fashion.
Before we dive deeper, I want to paint a little bit of a picture of what you did before you started your charity, Collective Fashion Justice. What was your life like?
As soon as I finished school, I moved cities to pursue modeling further. I had started modeling way too young, when I was 15. At the same time, I had started to build an ethical awareness, so I was making it a bit more challenging for my agents because I wouldn’t wear animal-derived materials, or I wouldn’t work with brands that were using sweatshops, that kind of thing.
Eventually, that led to me being dropped by one of my agencies, because it’s harder to make money from someone that way. I moved into freelancing. That slowly turned into creative directing on shoots, which then turned into consulting with brands who didn’t meet certain ethical criteria I had for those I worked with, to help them improve.
When I started working with charities working to protect life of all kinds, I realized that there was a gap that Collective Fashion Justice tries to fill: We look at how fashion can be improved from a holistic perspective, rather than only the environmental issues, or only the animal issues, or only the human issues.
Was founding your charity a gradual process, or was there one decisive moment?
I was unsure what my next move should be. Maybe I should become a lawyer, that would surely be useful, even if it doesn’t seem that interesting to me? But my mentor at the time said to me, “Emma, you don’t need to be a lawyer. You can hire lawyers when you need them. And I think in the future, you’ll probably be doing that under your own organization.”
I think that’s a really good example of why someone having vocal faith in your capacity is a really valuable thing, especially when you’re young. At just 20 years old, I probably wouldn’t have been confident enough to found Collective Fashion Justice otherwise.
When you started building the organisation, was there a blueprint for you?
I had worked at a number of charities before. They were all very small, so I understood how scrappy you had to be to start with.
And I knew that it would be smart to figure out how to fund it and grow it once I had proved the value of the work. So, for the first year, I didn’t actually do any fundraising. I didn’t even attempt to. I just decided it wasn’t worth my time, because who was going to care when I hadn’t proven myself yet?
“Who was going to care when I hadn’t proven myself yet?”
I worked as a waiter during that time, I continued to do some modeling and creative agency stuff, and I spent as much of my time as I could on the charity. Then, after that initial year, we had reports. We collaborated with respected organizations. I assembled a board of people with much longer careers. That was when I started saying, “Okay, I’m gonna look for funding and I’m gonna look for more mentors.”
You chose to prioritise mission over career. Was that a conscious choice?
It was conscious. I mean, I was aware as soon as I set those parameters for my modeling agency that I was actively cutting out huge amounts of money. I was getting offers for really good jobs that I had to actively continue to say no to. I think the more I did it, the more comfortable I got in that decision. And I realized that, actually, I don’t want to make money through things that don’t align with my values. That’s not what is most important to me.
I think that at the end of my life, would I rather feel like I’ve contributed something good to the world, or I’ve made a lot of money through means that I’m not particularly proud of? That answer was pretty obvious to me.
What’s Total Ethics Fashion?
When we think about sustainable fashion, often we are just thinking about the impact on the planet: greenhouse gases, biodiversity, that kind of thing.
When we think about ethical fashion, it is normally specifically related to people and labor rights, and only a very small section of people are also talking about vegan fashion, specific to animals.
Total ethics fashion highlights the interconnectedness of the life and wellbeing of people, our fellow animals and the planet. We are all a part of nature. It’s unproductive to care for and advocate for some parts of life but not others: total ethics fashion is about consistently prioritising life over profit for all three of those groups.
Can we talk about the structure of CFJ a little bit? What’s your team set-up like?
Yes. So the charity is very small. I call it small and mighty. But we’ve got a bit over half a dozen people who work consistently with us. They’re not all full-time and they’re all over the world, so everything is virtual. I like that because I think that it should be the best person, and I think that it’s totally possible to have the best people work together if they’re independent while collaborative workers, which they need to be for me, regardless of where they are.
As director, I oversee and drive our campaigns, our consulting and other work. And then there are people who focus on things like operations, campaign support, or contractors focused on PR, media, industry engagement, and research. Everyone has a quite specific area, but even within those areas, there’s a lot to do because it’s a small team.
Charities live from donations. How do you approach that?
Until last year, it was mostly me and a volunteer working on the fundraising and then someone else started to support us with it. In the beginning, a lot of it was just relational. We then started also applying for grants from foundations, as well as from individual philanthropists, particularly those in the effective altruism space.
How much does fundraising depend on your personal relationships with people?
Yeah, relationships are quite central, and while we’re trying to rest on the laurels of our work to a certain degree, that will always be a requirement. That’s the role of being a founder.
That being said, we are really keen to monitor the money we spend on fundraising, making sure it’s always a very small amount comparatively. People entrusted us with their hard-earned money, and regardless of how big or small the amount, that’s a huge responsibility.
“People entrust us with their hard-earned money, and that’s a huge responsibility”
We want to use it wisely and in line with our goal of improving the fashion industry.
Can you talk a little bit about how you build these relationships? Was it natural, strategic, or both?
I think, as is with everything, money creates money. It’s a lot easier to get donations once you already have donations, because it shows that you have been trusted by someone else before.
Early on, I did a lot of spreadsheets about what exactly I’d be using the money for. Transparency’s always been a very key element to the success of our fundraising.
Alongside the relational part, I often was not first approaching someone for funding, and I often genuinely did not even think about it at first. I was looking for mentorship or a collaboration, and that ended up leading to money.
A lot of it is about being really clear on what you align with potential funders on, like the values they have that you can help deliver change towards. We have some donors who are really interested in protecting a specific species, or they’re really interested in biodiversity specifically, or a certain part of the world being improved.
It’s really important not to warp and distort the work you’re doing in order to get money, because you need to have a clear purpose that you can’t be swayed from. At the same time, you need to be able to tailor how you describe that work to the person that you’re talking to based on their interest.
You also need to be persistent. I know people who have cold emailed foundations with updates on what their organization is doing literally for years with no reply, and then got a massive stack of cash.
You are sort of planting seeds everywhere, and you might be oblivious to their growth sometimes.
“You need to have a clear purpose that you can’t be swayed from”
You’re building this charity, you’re a speaker, you’re an author, you’ve been casually working in Australian politics on the side, you’re fighting child abuse, you’ve written three books, and you are only 25. Where do you get that discipline from?
I think some of it is just a personality thing, or maybe some undiscovered thing about myself. And then, mainly, I think it’s two things:
One is that I see how terrible a state the world is in in a lot of ways, and I feel an obligation to do something about it, which means I put a lot of pressure on myself because my wins and my achievements are in reducing ever so slightly the terribleness of it all.
So that’s a pretty strong motivator.
It’s a pretty dark motivator, too.
It is. And I think I probably have another dark motivator in that I probably tie a level of my self-worth to what I can do for others and for the world, which is not necessarily healthy. I should be able to see myself as just worthy, you know, living a good life no matter what, which is something I obviously believe in.
It’s okay to exist.
Yeah. That’s what I think about other animals and other people, and my whole shtick is like, “don’t turn people into working machines” –
–And then you do it to yourself?
Yeah, so they are two quite dark motivators. I need to solve the self-worth one, but I’m totally comfortable with keeping the motivation of “the world is terrible and you have an obligation to do something about it.”
“If more people feel a duty to each other and to the planet, there would be less burden on everyone”
Not that the world is terrible in total, but there’s a lot of shit that’s happening. I think that we all have a duty to each other and to the planet. And if more people felt that way, there would be less burden on everyone because it would be more equitably shared.
What do you think would need to happen for this dark motivation to feel a little bit lighter?
I mean, I think for a while the goalposts will just keep shifting and I will keep on wanting more, which in a way is a good thing. You realize your capacity to make positive change is bigger than you thought. So then you’re like, oh, maybe I could also do this.
I have a vision of myself as an elderly woman making sculptures and writing poetry, and something will have to have happened for me to be doing that. And I think that thing would have to be that I spent a big chunk of a lifetime enjoying doing work that is for a good cause.
What does success mean to you, and has it changed since starting CFJ?
Success long term is a very clear thing for me: Having made it inevitable for the fashion industry to move beyond the use of animal-derived materials that harm people, animals, and the planet, shifting instead to bio-based, responsible materials.
But in the day-to-day, I can’t measure myself against that because that’s not coming anytime soon. Day-to-day, it is like, “Have I put another brick on the wall towards that or not?”
Sometimes, it feels like five bricks for the day. Sometimes, it feels like a little crumb of a brick. But so long as it’s building up, I’m happy.
Yeah. But then, ultimate success means that you’re out of a job.
I’d love that. I will find other work. But yeah, that’s totally true of all charities. I would love for Collective Fashion Justice to not exist anymore. Wouldn’t that be an achievement?
The next question is a bit funny for you because it’s only been five years, but what advice would you give your 20-year-old self today?
I would probably just be like, “Good job, buddy.” I think the biggest thing my slightly younger self could have had was even more self-belief, that it is worth putting yourself out there, and your plan is a good one.
”A certain level of self-delusion is required to change the world.”
I think that I’ve said before, a certain level of self-delusion is required to change the world. Like you do need to think that you can do things that are ridiculous, because I think lots and lots of people are capable of doing ridiculously amazing things, and a lot of what is stopping people is not having someone tell them that they can, and not feeling that in themselves.
So, for anyone who’s not your 20-year-old self but is trying to build a working life that is purpose-driven and aligns with their values like yours: Where should they begin?
If you have the privilege to choose your work while maintaining a life that is healthy and safe and secure, you really, I think, need to set your own personal manifesto for what your values are, and if anything you’re doing doesn’t align with that, reconsider how it can, because ultimately, business is personal. You are not what you think or say you are. You are your actions.
So, reorganize your life to be the way that you genuinely feel it should be. It’s confronting and difficult to make those decisions and to change how you’re living your life, but ultimately, I think it’s much more uncomfortable to live out of alignment with your values.
Thank you for your insight and openness.
Thank you again for having me.
Emma Hakansson is an Australian-Swedish writer, speaker, model, and founder of Collective Fashion Justice. She advocates for ethical fashion, animal rights, and child protection.
She’s the author of Total Ethics Fashion (2023) and Subhuman (2024), and has engaged with organisations like the UN Environment Program, while also co-authoring national policy recommendations.
For information on Emma and CFJ, visit:
Emma is such a force for good in the world. Thanks for a good read.
Inspiring! It’s always great to read your interviews, Eric. Thank for sharing 😉