Ellen Hodakova Larsson Spins Magic From Dead Stock

Ellen Hodakova Larsson has a vision for the fashion world. “Imagine the kind of crazy creativity that would come about if we put restrictions on all brands so they couldn’t produce anything new?” she asks over Zoom. The Swedish designer is calling from outside her studio in Stockholm, dodging the rain while simultaneously satisfying her restless energy by moving from bench to bench every few minutes.

It’s not hard to imagine Larsson’s concept. (Consider Demna’s latest couture collection for Balenciaga, which saw t-shirts and jeans stitched together to create gowns, or the work Emily Adams Bode Aujla has been doing with old quilts at her brand for years.) Decluttercore—as W has dubbed it—is an innovative, sustainable subset of fashion that takes the old and turns it new again, exemplifying the “one man’s trash” idiom. It fosters immense creativity without immense cost on the planet, and it’s been a keyword in fashion for years now. But for Larsson, this approach isn’t a trend. it’s just the way she works.

Larsson, 32, grew up an hour outside Stockholm on a horse farm. “That sounds very posh, but it was the opposite,” she says. Her mother, a fur seamstress, was a mender by nature and would bring Larsson and her brother to secondhand stores, where they’d dig for pieces to reinvent. “We grew up with the mind-set of, you can make whatever you want from nothing,” she says. “She taught us how to look at things with imagination. I think that’s the most important part of my journey.” From her father, a military man, Larsson got her aesthetic, his love for projects, and his fearlessness. Finally, from her maternal grandmother, whom Larsson calls her “biggest inspiration,” she took her maiden name and put it on a label: Hodakova.

Eventually, Larsson moved off the horse farm and to Stockholm for art school, where she quickly realized she much preferred to sculpt on the body than anywhere else. The designer ended up switching to The Swedish School of Textiles. “My background in art and sculpture totally shaped me,” she adds. “It changed my world to start at art school. It made me ask more questions and learn to play with the ideas of expression. That definitely showed its effect when I started fashion school.”

Larsson’s design aesthetic was born from her days of mending old clothes with her mother. While some designers salivate over a bolt of brand-new fabric, Larsson finds all that pretty uninspiring—she prefers to build on what already exists. “During school, I always felt it was hard to work with flat materials, things I couldn’t break or shape,” she says. So Larsson brought the techniques she learned at home into the classroom. “I’m not afraid of failure,” she says. “I think that comes from my upbringing competing with horses. You just need to get up on the horse.” Larsson’s graduate collection got some much-deserved recognition, and the designer took the momentum and ran with it, officially starting Hodakova in 2021, a year after graduating from SST. “I was exploring everything through a very playful period,” she recalls.

Larsson seems to still be in that playful mode. While her pieces aren’t necessarily bright and cheerful (remember—her father was a soldier), there is a kookiness to Hodakova. Her dad’s attache case becomes a dress; wire bras create a texture of oversize, deflated bubble wrap. What might seem unappealing in theory is surprisingly sexy in practice. “It’s a magical moment when you see one thing become something else,” she says of her transformations. “Most people see a pile of belts and think, ‘That’s gross, nobody wants that,’ but you put hours into it, creating a dress from them, with a mix of both stiffness and softness.”

Celebrity clients like Kylie Jenner, Emma Corrin, and Maisie Williams are already fans of the rising brand (Jenner was one of the first to champion Hodakova, donning a top made of denim pants on her Instagram in April 2023). Julia Fox, somewhat unsurprisingly, is a fan of Larsson’s designs as well, especially one specific dress fashioned from belts. And while Hollywood stars of yore may have avoided a top of spoons or a corset constructed from a split work boot in favor of a more traditional gown, those two Hodakova creations both recently found their way on the red carpet last month, on Cate Blanchett and Greta Lee, respectively.

“It’s super important for me,” Larsson says of these celebrity placements, before taking a beat and reconsidering. “Well, it’s important, but also unimportant. The brand should speak for itself. It shouldn’t just be spoken of as a brand somebody wore.”

Larsson is no stranger to playing the industry game, but doing things her way. That approach led to an LVMH Prize nomination. Hodakova is now a finalist for this year’s award, the winner of which will be announced later this month. Despite her predominately laid-back attitude toward inside-baseball fashion, Larsson recognizes the necessity of a program akin to the Prize, which boasts a jury panel of industry bigwigs and an opportunity to win up to 300,000 euros. “It’s crazy publicity,” she says matter-of-factly, adding that the Prize’s platform is unbeatable, and will help Hodakova both grow and spread its message further. “To be able to make change, you have to be in the middle of things.”

Pushing for change is as much a part of Hodakova as the theme of transformation and reuse. If it wasn’t obvious from Larsson’s dream creative scenario (that moratorium on the production of new goods), sustainability is embedded into the ethos of Hodakova. Larsson isn’t asking for the end of design altogether—she herself could never do such a thing. “Humans have to create, that will never stop,” she says. “And they will always consume.” She simply hopes her peers will be more mindful of the effect that creation and consumption have on the planet. “We have to be aware of our presence on earth,” she says. “Designers should have to go through a questionnaire like, ‘Why should this be made?’”

As part of her sustainability push, Larsson has fostered relationships with various secondhand companies over the years, which provide her with the materials for each collection. In addition, every season, Hodakova partners with a brand that throws some more specialized pieces into the mix. The fall 2023 collection, for example, saw Houdini Sportswear provide leftover merchandise, allowing Larsson to create runway-ready dresses from windbreakers. Hodakova has managed to make this system work for the brand as a whole, as Larsson’s pieces live beyond the runway and are actually manufactured for the masses, with retail representation across 16 countries. “It’s a challenge every time,” Larsson says of production, but the feat proves that a fully sustainable fashion house is within the realm of possibility.

Larsson dreams of a fashion industry that operates like the Swedish countryside town in which she grew up, where neighboring farmers help and learn from each other. “You lend them a machine and they will help you sort the oats,” she says with a touch of sentimentality in her voice. “It’s a community where you exchange things, and it’s not about money. It’s beautiful.”

In a world of micro-trends, never-ending collection cycles, and enough launches to make your head spin, Larsson’s idyllic vision—a return to the artistry-focused days of fashion when a dress was an investment and the consumer was a collector—feels poignant. “Sometimes, we forget about the magical part,” she says. “But it’s important to have a little bit of magic in life.”