Charity organization Collective Fashion Justice (CJF) brought its shiringa bio-leather—made by Indigenous Amazonian people from regeneratively-collected tree sap—to the CPHFW Creative Hub.
Held Aug. 6-7 at the Nikolaj Kunsthal art gallery during Copenhagen Fashion Week, the dedicated space for industry-relevant innovation’s daytime programming spanned talks and workshops, including a screening of “Shiringa: Fashion Regenerating Amazonia.”
“If people really understood how fashion can destroy or protect life, we would all live better,” Rosalia Manuic Taan, an Indigenous woman picking her way through the rainforest, says in the film. “Making the material helps our land and community. With it we can support ourselves while keeping shiringa trees standing and safe.”
The CFJ’s award-winning documentary, honored at the Nature Without Borders International Film Festival, explored how the material is made, highlighting the collaboration between CFJ, footwear firm Caxacori Studio, and the Awajún community in bringing the material to life.
From left: Giorgia Feroldi, Sine Gerstenberg, Emma Hakansson, Rebekka Bay and Veronica D’Souza.
Courtesy of the Creative Fashion Justice
Following the screening was a panel discussion with industry players on the adoption of biomaterials, moderated by fashion writer and editor Giorgia Feroldi. For Emma Hakansson, filmmaker and founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, sharing shiringa’s story “beautifully encapsulated” the idea behind CFJ and total ethics fashion, the organization’s manifesto for prioritizing people and planet over profit and production.
“It came about because I felt a bit tired with this idea where we had ethical fashion on one side and sustainable fashion on the other as this binary idea,” Hakansson said, noting that humans are just one of the species on this planet; true efficacy must consider the trio: people, animals, planet. “Unless we can protect all three of those consistently, we won’t actually or genuinely protect any.”
Shiringa, she continued, has a particularly strong social impact component as it supports the community and helps protect it from deforestation.
“The fact that the community can do that helps the Peruvian government to create a reserved area that’s safer against deforestation,” Hakansson said. “So there, we really see the people-animals-planet component as being not just not-harmed but actively protected.”
One of the biggest issues for panelist Sine Gerstenberg, a journalist and creative consultant, has been the unnecessary dichotomizing of the industry. Too often, fashion falls into one of two categories: this or that. Either way, it’s too much of one element and not enough of the other.
“I’ve been quite provoked sometimes by the way that, on one hand, the fashion industry is told they’re harming the system but, on the other hand, when they try to make progress, it’s not fast enough,” Gerstenberg said. “I feel most like an advocate and a critic at the same time; I think it’s very important that we don’t try to sugarcoat the business but not attack it, either.”
One global heritage brand executive touched on the circular changes that have happened—as well as those that need to happen—in order to prevent further opportunities for black-or-white optics.
“I actually think the biggest shift that has happened in recent years is that the creative process is no longer a creativity-first process. It’s a material-first process,” said panelist Rebekka Bay, Marimekko’s chief creative officer. “I think the real shift is that we’re looking for materials through design and then we design, instead of designing and then finding materials.”
The concept fits squarely in the industry’s working definition of circularity—leading to Feroldi’s request for what “regenerative” means, as the CFJ understands it.
“I would hope that regenerative fashion is the same as this idea of total ethics fashion,” Hakansson said. “That means that we, ideally, have a fashion system that not only does minimal harm, but that can actually benefit.”
