Sustainability comes at a price
Two ‘indie’ fashion labels seek to make affordable eco-friendly apparel
Sustainable’ and ‘organic’ are the two most popular buzzwords today among socially conscious shoppers. But can we really make a difference by consuming, instead of conserving? The very name ‘organic cotton’ seems to imply you’re doing something good just by buying it. Yet textiles account for 20 per cent of water pollution worldwide, and the apparel business is the world’s second-biggest polluter after the oil industry.
India’s LataSita and Micronesium are two nascent ‘indie labels’ pushing for a more environmentally and ethically responsible approach to fashion. LataSita’s Meghna Nayak sources her fabric from second-hand clothes rather than new textiles. “I recognised the untapped resource lying locally in women’s closets with unworn saris and realised that preserving the future meant preserving the past,” she says.
Operating from a Facebook page and website (latasita. in), Nayak invites customers to send in their old saris and repurposes them into flattering new designs. The result is a potential family heirloom. It also makes designs with recycled fabric, making attractive, unusual clothes at affordable prices. A custom-made dress from a recycled sari ranges from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000, about the same as a mass market dress from Zara or H&M. Neil Andrew Robinson and Aloke Kumar Singh of Micronesium (www.micronesium.com) say truly sustainable fashion encourages long-term use. They design their pieces from organically sourced, organically dyed materials that are biodegradable to the last button. Aiming at a zero-waste production process, they utilise all their smaller cuts and encourage their customers to return clothes they no longer want so the items may be upcycled. That said, their products aren’t exactly cheap. A scarf at Micronesium starts at Rs 2,800. Dresses are about Rs 9,000. Moreover, they produce only about 160 pieces annually. “Until there is a total revival of organic and indigenous textile and a fair review of trade policies [and] labour laws,” they say, a sustainable product “will not be able to compete with mass-produced fast fashion and retail.”
That’s a bitter pill. But there’s still something the conscious consumer can do. Buy less. And that also means some of us can afford to pay a little more for ethical sourcing, fair compensation and upcycling.
“Preserving the future means preserving the past,” says Lata Sita’s Meghna Nayak