Emma does a whole lot of different things, but they all feed into her goal of collective liberation.

Emma Hakansson is the founding director of Collective Fashion Justice, a charity dedicated to creating a total ethics fashion system which prioritises the wellbeing of people, our fellow animals and the planet, before profit.

Her book Total Ethics Fashion explores the namesake term that she coined to guide the fashion industry forward. The Financial Times named it one of the best style books of 2023. The book is available in English and Italian.

Through Collective Fashion Justice, Emma has worked with the United Nations Environment Programme, Good On You, Fashion Revolution, the Center for Biological Diversity, World Animal Protection, and other leading organisations. Emma has consulted on passed progressive fashion legislation in New York City, spoken at the European Parliament, been invited to provide expertise in Parliament inquiries in Australia, and consulted for global brands and fashion councils seeking to improve their ethics and sustainability. Most notably, she has helped London Fashion Week to ban fur and wild animal skins, as well as Copenhagen, Berlin and Melbourne Fashion Week to go wildlife-free (also banning feathers).

Emma has lectured, spoken and run workshops around the world, in schools including London College of Fashion, Institut Français de la Mode, Swinburne University, Accademia Costume e Moda, Istituto Marangoni, and many more. She has reviewed and helped to transform the entire fashion course at LCI College, aligning with total ethics fashion values.

Her writing work explores sustainability, ethics and justice both in fashion and broader society. Her first book, How Veganism Can Save Us, was published by Hardie Grant in 2022 and is also available in Korean. Her latest book, Sub-Human, was published by Lantern in 2024. Hakansson’s writing and research have featured across The Guardian, Business of Fashion, Vogue Business, WWD, and many more.

Emma co-hosts the Fashion, Really? podcast, which is listed on Good On You’s best fashion podcast list. She has also spoken on a number of other podcast and radio shows, including Clare Press’ renowned Wardrobe Crisis, BBC’s Woman’s Hour and People Fixing the World, the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development podcast, the Plant Based News podcast and ABC Radio.

Her first short film, Willow and Claude, won multiple international awards, including Best Documentary at the Amsterdam Fashion Film Festival, and seven other awards, selections and nominations. This project also won a Gold Good Design Award in 2022.

In 2025, Hakansson’s charity released another short film she directed and produced, SHIRINGA: Fashion Regenerating Amazonia. It has already won two awards, nominated and selected for others awaiting final decisions.

Meanwhile, the feature documentary SLAY, in which she was a line producer, researcher and interviewee, has been watched hundreds of thousands of time on Waterbear Network.

Emma’s work with Australian Childhood Foundation is rooted in the belief that those with lived experience of child sexual abuse are most knowledgeable on how we can protect children from abuse today. Emma’s Project launched in 2022, and invited fellow survivors of child sexual abuse to share their wisdom on how adults could have better protected them. With nearly 360 respondents, this project offers important insights and knowledge which can be used to produce better resources, programs, campaigns and policies to protect children from abuse: by putting the weight of this burden onto adults, not children themselves.

The first report from this project, co-authored by Emma, launched in early 2024 in the Victorian Parliament, with the new, collectively decided name of Our Collective Experience Project. This and a subsequent 2025 report she co-wrote call for reform to the Working With Children Check, to include mandatory child abuse prevention and early intervention training. Emma lobbies governments to implement this reform and in 2025, New South Wales became the first state to pass a motion towards that goal.

Her work with the Foundation has been covered by Triple J’s Hack program, ABC, The Australian, Mamma Mia, and many others.

She is also the Chair of the project’s Lived Experience Advisory Committee, and has contributed her knowledge to the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. She has spoken to Anglicare and other child-related organisations about how to better prevent abuse, and in 2025 will give a plenary speech at the International Childhood Trauma Conference.

Viewing oppression as a structure manifesting in different forms, Emma believes that the exploitation of children, other people, our fellow animals and the planet can be broken down and moved beyond when we prioritise autonomy and respect ahead of domination and extraction.

In 2025, the Herald Sun listed Emma as one of their ‘25 under 25’. In 2024, she was included in the Vox Future Perfect 50, for her work combatting the climate crisis. In 2023, Emma was awarded the Animal Justice Foundation’s Voiceless Award for Youth Advocacy. In 2021, she received an International Women’s Day Award from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Previously, Emma worked producing campaigns for Animal Liberation Victoria. She helped obtain and release global first footage of blunt force trauma killing of male kids in the dairy industry, resulting in a major brand ban on goat’s milk products within 48 hours of launch. She also ran ALV’s first fashion campaigns, and produced research and written works for the group. Hakansson also previously worked for She’s A Crowd, a tech startup using collective story-based data to prevent gender-based violence.

For two years ending in 2024, Hakansson also worked as Communications Officer for progressive Animal Justice Party MP, Georgie Purcell. She is currently a Delegate to the Victorian branch of the Animal Justice Party. Emma is also a board member of the Animal Liberation Film Festival, and an advisory board member of Farm Transitions Australia.

Emma also loves to climb trees, cuddle with as well as appreciate animals from afar (perhaps unsurprisingly and depending on who), and sing in the shower. Her tattoos include ‘strength’ and (in) ‘softness’ on either arm, and a constellation made from her freckles. Despite first driving a quad bike at twelve she still has no driver’s licence (here’s to public transport), and if the world were in a better, kinder shape she would probably be a poet who made sculpturally-led video artworks in nature.