Emma La Rocca, emroce founder and designer
Zero waste fashion designer is a label Emma La Rocca wears with extreme pride. Her swimwear brand emroce is created with love, passion, and extreme awareness around inclusivity.
Crafted in her Papamoa studio and strongly influenced by her Italian roots, the emroce collection encourages ethical consumption.
Her collection spans bikinis, one-piece suits, children’s swimsuits, and non-binary swimwear, designed with trans-women bodies in mind – essentially feminine styles with an extra wide crotch.
The Jude High Waisters are another popular non-binary design, which also look great on a range of body types.
In keeping with emroce core values, all pieces are cut from zero-waste patterns, mainly from high-quality Italian, recycled fabric and all cutting patterns fit together perfectly like a puzzle, so no fabric is discarded.
The technique is inspired by the zero-waste patterns of Japanese Kimono and working with this mindset encourages extreme creativity and unique designs.
“Our workspace is part studio and part laboratory,” says Emma. “We’ve been developing our own unique zero-waste business model and design methods over the past decade.
“Part of the incentive is around the economic rewards and ecological benefits. We’re saving on average 40% of fabric that would otherwise be sent to landfill.”
The sleek silhouette of The Sally & the Sea of Seamen top belies its versatility –
it can be tied in three different ways and was originally designed for breastfeeding
emroce is making waves on the global stage when it comes to perfecting zero-waste pattern methods and business models, which Emma hopes fast fashion companies can scale up to fit into their large companies.
“We recently worked on a project for Decathlon, the world’s largest sporting goods retailer and are now working with Mindful Fashion NZ on a free seminar to encourage New Zealand and Australian fashion brands to work with zero or minimal waste patterns.
“Slowly my dreams of inspiring fast fashion companies to create less waste are coming true so it’s a very exciting time.”
emroce designs don’t follow trends or make purely for aesthetics. Every style is pared back to its basic necessities.
“We would never add an extra strap or frill to make the garment prettier. We would only do so in order to make the garment function better or to use any fabric that would otherwise become waste.
“Our styles are designed to stay on in the surf to encourage women to have fearless fun in the water and to cultivate a wider appreciation and respect for our rivers, lakes and oceans.”
Every emroce piece is designed and cut to fit together like a puzzle to ensure zero waste.
Rare scrap fabric is used as frills.
With active lifestyles in mind, the Deco del Mar surf-friendly swimwear collection is cut from a tessellating pattern (so no waste is created) and made using a high-quality Italian textile, created with ECONYL® nylon fiber consisting of recycled fishing nets and other nylon waste.
Ever the changemaker, Emma also transforms vintage bedsheets into zero-waste summer garments, under her label Sweet Sheets. While usually between 15 and 40% of fabric is wasted with many traditional pattern-making methods, each Sweet Sheets garment creates zero waste.
Made entirely out of square and rectangle pieces, each garment fits exactly on half a sheet, meeting Emma’s exacting demands where the functionality of a garment is its true beauty.
Emma transforms vintage bedsheets into zero-waste garments under her label Sweet Sheets
Photos by Jake Thomas Pandermann
Emma has also taken her love of French knitting (her thesis collection, which stemmed from research into why people over-consume) and created a collection called Consume Me, continuing her desire to encourage the love of making rather than buying.
“I saw over-production and over-consumption as the biggest impacts on our environment. Therefore, I made a collection of durable garments that people would feel an instant sense of nostalgia towards clothing that they would never want nor need to throw away.
“The garments are easy to repair and the knitting spool is left on so that you can continue adding to the piece. I enjoy making these pieces so much.
“During my research for Consume This, I was interested in the ideas of evolutionary biologists as to why we consume but now am much more focused on learning about capitalism and how we can improve this very outdated and damaging system.”
Emma’s love of French knitting and research into over consumption
saw her create a Consume Me collection
FashioNZ finds out more.
What are the biggest challenges of having sustainability and zero waste at the heart of your business?
The biggest challenge is that I can’t yet make my product as sustainable as I’d like it to be (ideally, all products could be circular or 100% compostable). I’m trying to do something good for the world, but it’s not good enough. So there’s always that inner battle of “Is this the best way in which I can be helping the world right now?” This is something that companies that aren’t sustainably or ethically minded don’t need to worry about.
What do you enjoy most about designing swimwear and what prompted you to include non-binary designs?
The best part is the gratitude I receive from women who find that I make for their size and that the swimwear is covering them where they want to be covered. I’ve been thanked for giving women confidence to swim again, which really blows me away
I have a new friend who is a trans-woman. She is so beautiful and full of wisdom and confidence but she hadn’t been swimming since her transition. We worked together to make some non-binary styles because the world will benefit from everyone being happier and everyone loving and respecting the water more.
What was the design of the first swimwear that you made?
The first finalised style was the Mangia Fuoco Bikini, which is still our bestseller. I wanted to make a high-waisted bottom and the negative space between the pattern pieces became the bikini top. My model at the time was Veronica Del Vecchio. She’s a performer who works as a Mangia Fuoco – Fire eater.
The first emroce design modelled by fire eater Veronica Del Vecchio
Images supplied