Taking Things Slow with the Lejonhärta Twins
As we all face ourselves with a heightened scrutiny due to the insular nature of quarantine, the twins have found that the mirror is speaking back with more insight than expected.
office spoke with Elizabeth and Victoria about quarantine and Black Lives Matter.
Left — Dress by LOEWE
Right — Full looks by ACNE STUDIOS, belt model's own
Hi Elizabeth and Victoria, how are you today?
Hi office! We’re happy and calm.
Where are you right now?
In our hometown Luleå in northern Sweden, Sápmi.
What have you been doing during quarantine? How have you been keeping busy?
We haven’t been keeping busy. We formed an intention not to. We have tried to unlearn the belief that your self-value is correlated to your level of productivity and that you have to sustain a relentless pace of stimulation to feel good. We’ve tried to allow ourselves to fully lean into the subversive thought that it’s okay to just be.
Left — Dresses by LOEWE and MM6 MAISON MARGIELA
Right — Shirt and jacket by ACNE STUDIOS, belt model's own
How has it affected your relationship with the Internet?
The global scale of this issue has made us feel more connected to people online than before. Memes have been a love language. In what ways have you experimented with communication during this time? We’ve been training fierce eagles to personally deliver cryptical hand-written letters to our friends across the globe. Okay, that’s not entirely true. But we’ve both been consciously communicating with ourselves more, listening to our inherent feelings, and becoming more aware of our thoughts and the tonality of our conversations with ourselves.
What have you two been thinking about these days?
How to love more. How to forgive. How wishing good upon others instead of comparing is essential. Also just random things like damn, dragonflies have been around for 300 million years.
Left — Dresses by MM6 MAISON MARGIELA and LOEWE
Right — Jacket by NINAMOUNAH
How have you been feeling about the state our world is going in?
Sadness, but also hope that this pivotal time will prompt real change. As a whole, we have become more aware of the fragility of our systems and less oblivious to the constant convulsion of the world. Maybe it takes collective havoc to crack open that consciousness.
What have your conversations been like around Black Lives Matter?
We’ve both cried a lot, felt fatigued and exhausted. My reaction surprised me. As Black people we always have these conversations, there’s no ‘moment’ of our lives mattering, there’s no sudden awakening to our oppression. It’s our reality. There’s no opt-out on the experience of being Black in a system of white supremacy and the palpable and perpetual racism it entails. We inherit the fight for Black liberation. But the intensification we saw in the information we consume forced us to re-live and unpack a lot of trauma. So the conversation centered mostly around how to be resourceful while staying rooted in tenderness, how to use our privilege as Black people of a light complexion and how to heal while help healing others.
Left — Full looks by NINAMOUNAH
What has the movement evoked in you as Afro-Swedish women?
We’ve been revisiting our childhood a lot. As a child you lack the vocabulary to formulate your experience and what you’re being subjected to. Especially when it is unrelenting. When the people who are supposed to protect you, teachers, authorities, are the ones authorizing your oppression. Eventually you start to normalize racially charged bullying, racial profiling, racist slurs and even physical violence. And when you get older you start to realize why your parents were so resolute on teaching you self-worth, pan-Africanist values and why you had to talk about it all the time to protect yourself from societal gaslighting.
Sweden has long been seen as a paragon for social equality but that self-image has been repressive and very harmful for the conversation on race overall. Sweden often dislocates racism as an American problem or problem ‘elsewhere.’ The reality is that Sweden, like most European countries, built its wealth on colonialism and oppressive colonialist racist structures and beliefs that are still present in our society. The conversations here around Black Lives Matter have been very helpful in understanding that ultimately there is a lack of empathy for Black children and lives that some people are completely oblivious to. For Sweden it’s been progressive to learn that racism doesn’t always articulate itself as blatantly hating someone but also as the unconscious biases that we all occupy in this system.
Right — Jacket by NINAMOUNAH
Have you been having any conversations around diversity in the beauty world?
I never quite liked the concept of the word beauty, it’s uninteresting to me. It’s an elitist concept that excludes and devalues a lot of people and forces them to try to attain ‘perfection’ at the expense of their mental and physical health. We need to transform the whole notion that beauty is a physical attribute.
Have you had any projects on hold because of quarantine? Have you thought of new projects you want to get at when quarantine is over?
Most of our projects, as well as our Kung-Fu plans and a big move, have been put on hold. We’re trying to be present and enjoy the creativity that stems from slowing down.
Dresses by LOEWE and MM6 MAISON MARGIELA
What is something missing from life pre-quarantine that you wish you could get back?
Hugs! And going to the movies.
What is something that quarantine has prompted you to change about your lives? Your world?
We’ve mostly changed ourselves and our thoughts. This time has taught us the freedom in embracing change, reminded us of how good simplicity makes you feel and that joy is a choice. I learn and re-learn that every time my life seemingly falls apart.
