2023: A Year of Sustainable Craft & Green Heart
With each year that passes, we always aim to grow with every collection. It’s a pillar within our values to always consider how we can make further changes within our production processes that impact our world positively. And in a world that’s constantly changing, with discoveries and innovations helping us frame just how much we currently affect our planet as well as revealing new ways to do better, it’s our responsibility to also evolve constantly.
This past year, 2023, is a mark of our latest sustainable achievements, and we wanted to share them with you!
Generally, we always aim to achieve these goals:
- Only craft with sustainably made fabrics
- Incorporate as much artisan, handmade craft in our designs as possible
- Continue an work with with artisan communities and ethical vendors, building stronger relationships
- Lower our waste through our own circular production systems
- Create designs that any and every body can comfortably go out into the world in
- Introduce and further educate our community on slow fashion
And before we get into all the stats, our accomplishments truly only exist with your support. With it, we’re able to continue to craft consciously and have the ability to grow, so thank you for being with us through it no matter how long you’ve been with us on this journey!
1.Sustainable Fibres.
Organic cotton continues to be our star fabric due to how incredibly sustainable and versatile it is. Why do we love it so much? Our GOTS certified organic cotton fibres are sustainable due to a very important factor, there is no use of any insecticides or pesticides used within its production process. This ultimately means the fabric created is a much safer one to produce for farmers, workers, and tailors, as well as much safer to wear.
Through 2023, we’ve worked with a few variations of the fibre that’s all provided by our ethical vendor Herbal Fab, those being: our classic organic cotton, organic cotton poplin, organic cotton satin, and double gauge organic cotton.
In total, and of course due to you all choosing pieces crafted with them, we were able to craft with 978 metres of organic cotton fabrics to create many conscious garments & accessories.
2.Craft & Fabric.
To continue on fabric, let’s talk about handmade!
With each year, we do our best to introduce as many designs as we can that incorporate fabrics created or embellished by hand. To create the following fabrics and designs, very little machinery is used in the process and depends more on artisan skill - that means we are able to lower our carbon footprint immensely in comparison to conventional machine-driven weaving and printing practices used by fast fashion brands.
In summary, we crafted with 1020.35 metres of handwoven organic cotton, also known as khadi. We also crafted with 1828.8 metres of handwoven Kala cotton fabric - this particular fibre is native to India’s Kachchh region, a resilient strain that is only rainfed and is able to flourish in harsh environments.
In total, that’s about 2849 metres of handwoven fabric.
When it comes to prints, we hand block printed 1494.25 metres of fabric, and screen printed 740.62. That’s a total of 2235 metres of printed fabric.
To expand on these techniques, the hand block printing process is done entirely by hand from mixing colours, to carving the printing blocks, to applying the motif to fabric. Screen printing does utilise a screen printing machine, however, the process is conducted in an efficient, small, slow capacity by an artisan community that we’ll introduce in this next section.
3.Artisan Crafted.
Handmade means artisan crafted, and in 2023, we continued our strong relationships with 3 artisan craft communities in various parts of India to craft many of our garments.
We worked with printing communities in Jaipur for all our prints, hand block and screen, that includes, particularly, a community in Bagru who have been passing down their art and techniques for over 5 generations through the local families, always keeping true to tradition while working to uplift the sector, and modernising where they can that still keeps their production small and sustainable - hence the use of screen printing.
We worked with handloom community and NGO, WomenWeave, located in Maheshwar, a community dedicated to uplifting women in the sector who are often overlooked and undervalued in the value chain - they create all our handwoven organic cotton, or khadi.
We also worked with another handloom community and NGO, Khamir Crafts, located in Kachchh who are dedicated to revitalising the handmade process and use of the Kala cotton fibre - they create all our Kala cotton fabric.
Both these handloom communities spin and weave their fibres and fabrics, respectively, entirely by hand.
Moreover, due to your orders and immense support, we were able to give all these communities work every month of the year of 2023.
4.Low Waste.
A circular process is one that prevents waste and is efficient in its use of resources. And so, within our own workshop in Delhi where our main production team of tailors, or threadspellers as we call them, operate, we make sure to pick up every bit of scrap and excess fabric that falls to our workshop floor for later use. It’s an inevitability within the process but it’s one we have used as an opportunity to upcycle - meaning to reuse discarded materials to create a product of higher quality. What do we upcycle exactly? Every single one of our accessories!
This year, we saved 1171 metres of fabric from going to landfills, which instead went towards crafting upcycled accessories like fanny bags, make-up pouches, keychains and more.
So, because of all of these achievements in mind, we crafted over 1600 conscious garments & 1800 upcycled accessories.
5.Most Loved.
To delve a little more into what you, our community were loving in 2023, our most versatile dress silhouettes were absolute favourites, with two of them being variations of our Bloom dress, a longtime bestseller - both of which are also made in hand block printed, handwoven fabric, showing just how much you love artisan craft!
These were your top 3 looks from 2023:
1.Tropical Garden organic cotton dress
2.Monstera Bloom kala cotton dress
3.Coral Bloom kala cotton dress
6.How we have grown
And finally, we wanted to tell you that because of all your incredible support, we were able to expand our team throughout the year with a total of 8 new members joining our team, most being threadspellers!
Not only that, our community has grown too! It’s been such an incredible journey so far and we’re so lucky to continue meeting new green heart-ers whether that’s at pop-ups or through our social platforms.
This year, we have been so lucky to welcome in 525 of you into our community - which means 525 of you began your slow fashion journey with us and we’re so honoured you chose us to be a part of it.
And in 2024, we’re gonna be focusing on this key notion: EMPOWERMENT.
With a New Year comes new opportunities and we want to be able to give you, our community, all the tools to build your own sustainable wardrobe as well as lead as much of a conscious life as you can.
Empowerment is all about using your voice, developing your agency and taking control of your life so you can make choices that uplift you - and we hope we can help you achieve that while also enriching the world around us at the same time.
How are we going to do this? By sharing how we craft sustainably and what the impact of our actions are. By also bringing you on this journey and showing how you can make better choices when it comes to the clothes they wear. We believe that the way forward lies in empowering you in taking better steps towards building a better fashion system.
We can’t wait to continue this journey with you in the year to come, like we mentioned, none of this is possible without you, our community, helping us push forward to think and craft more consciously with every step. Here’s to more change to come and creating a greener world in 2024!