Kerry Clarkson

Kerry Clarkson (Kerry Clarkson-Valdivia) is a fashion and footwear designer and the founder of Taka, a sustainable label of vegan, vegetable-tanned leather shoes and palm-frond handwoven hats. Raised between London and Peru and now based in Los Angeles, she builds Taka around a seasonless capsule of handcrafted pieces made with local artisans and “noble” raw materials chosen to work in harmony with environmental systems.

Approach. Clarkson's practice reconciles a love of beautiful, handcrafted objects with an environmentally and socially sound model of making — undyed and naturally tanned materials, traditional hand processes, and long-term relationships with artisans. At Ontopo's 2019 Catskill Zendo retreat, The Explicit Life of Plants, she prepared a communal Korean temple-food dinner.

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