EMME STUDIO
by Korina Emmerich, in collaboration with Autumn Chacon and Laura Ortman.
Korina is a celebrated fashion designer and artist, known for her sustainable brand, EMME Studio, founded in 2015. Emmerich’s designs blend textile with social justice, emphasizing ethical production, minimal waste, and the reclamation of cultural heritage. Her work has been featured in major exhibitions, including In America: A Lexicon of Fashion at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at the Museum of Modern Art’s Weaving Together / Woven Histories : Textiles and Modern Abstraction.
Emmerich has showcased her collections at SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market, Santa Fe Native Fashion Week, Fashion and Arts Toronto, NYFW and Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week.
Co-founder of Relative Arts, a community space in New York City's East Village, Emmerich fosters Indigenous creativity and education. She has collaborated with institutions like the Hudson River Museum, RISD, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, ICA Boston and the Denver Art Museum. She has contributed to the development of multidisciplinary programs highlighting sustainability, ethical fashion and cultural reinvigoration helping shape the future of art and fashion.
The Collection The Body of Malinxe is a contemporary retelling of the myth of La Llorona, or “the weeping woman.” Based on the original opera, featuring costume design and construction by Emmerich; Chacon and Ortman examine Malinxe, the real Nahua woman deemed the mother of modern Mexican people, whose complex story is often equated with that of La Llorona.
Tracing back to 1550, La Llorona is well-known in American Southwest and Latin American cultures as a vengeful spirit who roams near bodies of water, mourning the children she drowned and warning others of water’s power. In this interpretation, Malinxe embodies a contemporary woman who submerges herself into La Llorona’s dangerous realm and must make transformative decisions to save her own spirit from continuing down the destructive path of La Llorona. Malinxe is a woman outside of time who is submerged in Llorona’s dangerous realm and must realize herself.