Flavia Amadeu is a Brazilian designer and social entrepreneur whose wild rubber samples you can find in our sustainable textile resource library.
Holding a PhD in Design and Sustainability from the London College of Fashion, where she was part of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and an MA supervisor, Amadeu has been researching and designing with the colored wild rubber from the Amazon rainforest since 2004. She has also worked in partnership with the Chemistry Laboratory LATEQ at the University of Brasília, with top model Lily Cole and UN Women, among many others.
The focus of her work relies on supporting local communities, especially communities full of entrepreneurial women, through collaboration on handcrafts and on the production of sustainable materials. We caught up with her to talk more about her inspiration, conservation and designing with wild rubber. Here’s what she had to say:
Do you think that objects can create an awareness by being designed beautifully or is the sustainability story first?
I think design as a holistic process that goes from the origin of the materials to the formal aspects of the product. Objects beautifully designed are fundamental to engage people in a new awareness of consumerism. A beautiful, good, original design is what adds value to the materials and the story behind them.
People want to feel good, fashionable and to also have their needs satisfied. Their awareness goes together with the possibilities available. If they are able to choose fashion and design products with social and environmental values, then they have real choices and can advocate for that.
How did you discover wild rubber and why the inspiration to create with it? Is the material itself inspiring to work with?
I began to research and develop projects with wild rubber in 2004 during my MA in Arts at the University of Brasilia when I was invited to collaborate on a project of art and science. That was when I met the team of the laboratory LATEQ at the University of Brasilia, who, at the time, had just developed the colored wild rubber. They were very interested in further developing this material as well as seeing it applied. That was when we began our partnership that endures until today.
At the time, I was looking for new materials, I was already a designer interested in developing projects of both social and environmental impact, so all came together. I suddenly had full access to the lab and as I researched the material and learnt about it, the more in love I became with it and the whole purpose of its existence. I worked every day during the period of six months, just testing the material and preparing materials for an exhibition in the Itaú Cultural of São Paulo.
