Portrait - Emma

What inspires me? That’s complicated ... I’d say books first, all sorts of books, really. Besides books on photography and design, I love books that transport me back to my days as a student. I have loads of books on anthropology. Very academic and technically detailed books about the Zapoteca traditional dress, for example, or traditional Mayan dress, as worn in a specific region of Guatemala.

I also collect books on textiles. One of the most recent ones to have had a big impact on my visual imagination was African Textile (John Gillow, 2016). It looks back at the history of African weaving. It’s a stunning book that covers Central African weaving and also Moroccan weaving. In the same vein, I also love the book Rugs and weaving: the art of the Berber women of Morocco (Frederic Damgaard, 2009) and Marokko/Morocco mon amour (Kurt Rainer, 2005).

But let’s start back at the beginning. When I was 21 I travelled to Latin America for the very first time. I was a student and I went with two girlfriends in search of new experiences and encounters. At the time I was studying economics, not so much out of choice but more because I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

This trip came into being a er many months of planning; I had been toying with the idea for ages. The cartoon The Mysterious Cities of Gold definitely had a big early influence on me. It’s true! (laughing). When I was a teenager, I was already passionate about South American literature and magical realism. One hundred years of solitude (Gabriel García Márquez, 1967) had a huge impact on me. As did the work of Jorge Luis Borges, that I read from cover to cover in just a few weeks.

This was when Sessùn first came into being, back in 1996. Those first pieces met with instant success. Although we were only talking about very small quantities, it was enough to make me realise that this was what I wanted to do. The first shops to stock my designs were mainly urban and streetwear outlets. So I found myself within the skateboard and surfing community, yet Sessùn offered a more feminine alternative to the traditional urban brands. In hindsight, I think that it was this unorthodox positioning that enabled the brand to take root and develop a loyal client base.

Whilst on my travels, I continued discovering new literary genres, including Japanese literature. Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (1970) introduced me to the gracefulness of Japan and to japanese notions of peace, passing time and contemplation. It was this book that made me travel to Japan in 2003-2004. There, I discovered Japanese textiles and, in particular, their use of indigo. This paved the way for the Sessùn Blue collection, then the Indicrafts exhibition, both inspired by the color indigo. There is one book that is regarded as being the leading authority on the subject. It is called Indigo: The Colour that Changed the World by Catherine Legrand (2012).

All of the above-mentioned books have had an important influence on Sessùn’s creative being. Although novels may not create pictures or collections, they generate desire for exploration and sow the seeds of creativity.

Either way, anything really can be a source of inspiration. For each collection we write one or more stories, primarily visual stories, a story in pictures. The starting point may sometimes only be one picture, one specific photograph. One image in particular comes to mind, a photograph by Joel Meyerowitz taken in New York. It is of a young woman in a pretty dress, standing at the foot of the Empire State Building. The colours were so powerful that they generated a whole story and collection.

The Lost tribes of Tierra del Fuego, a book of photographs by Martin Gusinde, (Editions Xavier Barral, 2015) inspired another story for a collection for Summer 2017. The book contains the photographic testimony of a priest in the early twentieth century who went to Tierra del Fuego to discover the culture of an Indian tribe. The Indians wore distinct tribal make-up yet dressed in the Western clothes of the early century: flannel and wool suits for the men and Victorian blouses for the women, accessorized with animal skins. This book really struck a chord and inspired me. For this is a subject that has fascinated me every since I was a young girl. My first interest in ethnic textiles goes back to westerns - cowboy clothes at first, men’s farming clothes, then Indian costumes as seen in the lm Little Big Man (Arthur Penn, 1970).

My grandfather and my parents were all seasoned filmgoers so my relationship with cinema started very young. Amongst all the films I watched I was also fascinated by, although not yet inspired by Hollywood in the 40’s and 50’s. This naturally led me, when I was about 15, to Italian cinema. I remember the first time I watched Antonioni’s film L’Avventura, and what a huge visual impact it had on me. My parents showed me films by Visconti, Fellini and Pasolini, and then soon moved on to the New Wave. Godard’s films with Anna Karina are an eternal source of inspiration. I first watched those films as a teenager, and then watched them a second time, in my late twenties, paying particular attention to the style of the era. This time I watched the films purely for visual reasons and to get inspired.