The curious case of sustainable brands

What exactly does a sustainable brand stand for?

Everybody loves fashion. And that’s a fact. In the FY 2018, Indians spent ₹5,408 billion on buying clothes, a hike from the ₹1,924 billion they spent in 2010.

However, you can love fashion and be eco-friendly. And how do we do so? By purchasing our clothing from a sustainable brand.

A sustainable brand has several criteria, which makes it different from fast fashion brands. It includes-

1. Paying fair wages to farmers, weavers, and artisans.
2. Promoting indigenous handwork like mirror work, block-printing, etc.
3. Encouraging handmade or woven products rather than adopting machines at the greatest level.
4. Do not indulge in child labor or exploitation.
5. Using handmade textiles or homegrown fabrics like khadi.
6. The literal reason which makes them a ‘sustainable’ brand is that they use upcycled materials or waste like plastic bottles, discarded clothes, cosmetics containers, and scraps to create new products or clothing.
7. Using natural dyes extracted from petals, barks, and leaves.
8. These brands primarily use sustainable fabrics for their products. These fabrics include organic cotton, organic hemp, sheep wool, camel wool, cashmere, yak wool, silk, and recycled leather.

So, at an individual level, should adopt sustainable clothing to the greatest extent we can. Mind you, it is almost impossible to eliminate fast fashion from our lives, but we can do our bit to incorporate sustainable clothing.

And how do we do so? With budding eco-friendly, sustainable fashion labels of India.

1. Mio Borsa
2. No Nasties
3. Ba No Batwo
4. Nicobar by Good Earth
5. Doodlage by Kriti Tula
6. Upasana
7. Ka-Sha
8. Paromita Banerjee
9. Ethicus
10. House of Wandering Silk

These brands, at their individual levels, are doing their bit to make India more sustainable. Let’s do our bit to support sustainable products in our daily use.

Interning with Green Canvas