On A Journey Through India

For many, especially those of us in urban centers, it can be easy to wax poetic about the rural village economy. But what remains indisputable is the fact that the village economy provides a vision of sustainability that was not rooted in consumption but rather, participation.

This piece, written by Aditi Mayer, was originally published on Vogue Business.

Activist, content creator and photojournalist Aditi Mayer takes a long journey through India to deepen her sustainable fashion practice via the lens of her motherland—a journey spanning a nation’s agriculture, its artisans and beyond.

Throughout my travels in India, understanding fashion through a lens of agriculture has been a central focus. With a fashion landscape that is nearly 60% dominated by fossil fuel derived synthetic materials like polyester, we forget that fashion has historically been a product of agriculture. And South Asia’s agrarian soul has meant we have a lexicon of natural fibers that make the case for regional textiles– from the rainfed kala cotton in Gujarat, desi kapaa in Punjab, to phuti karpas in Bangladesh that is spun into the valuable Dhaka muslin.

While environmental and economic pillars of sustainability have made headway in fashion conversations, cultural sustainability has remained at the fringes.

Cultural sustainability underpins knowledge systems around a region’s biodiversity and native fibers, to localized artisanal practices that have gone back generations– deeply important knowledge systems that had been preserved through intergenerational transfer. And in the frenzied search for silver bullet solutions, we lose sight of the quieter existence of communities whose cultures have held symbiotic relationships with the land.

India is one such place where cultural sustainability hangs in the balance– and our fashion scene is one such industry that can honour discrediting ways of knowing: from ancestral farming to artisan knowledge systems.

For many, especially those of us in urban centers, it can be easy to wax poetic about the rural village economy– the self-sufficient community model rooted in agriculture as its central industry, supplementing other industries– such as the repossession of spinners, weavers, and artisans. But it’s important to contextualize the realities of the village economy in the face of today’s changing climate, crop failures, and market devaluation.

However, what remains indisputable is the fact that the village economy provides a vision of sustainability that was not rooted in consumption but rather, participation.

That was the vision of the village economy I wanted to know better.

Through my travels in my home state of Punjab, I met with farmers who had made the switch back to ancestral farming practices– practices that now often carry the contemporary titles of “organic,” or “regenerative” farming.

All of these farmers framed the return to ancestral practices as a return to spiritual and emotional connections to land, versus the reductionary view of land as a tool for solely output, yield, and profit. And in that process, farmers were able to return to pressing matters like biodiversity, native ecologies, water conservation, to soil health.

Many articulated the inherent ties between ancestral farming with ancestral artisan industries– and how the destruction of one went hand in hand with the other. To protect one is to protect the other, and therefore, our virsa (heritage).

The village economy then, tells us the importance of returning to a model that challenges the idea of mass production, and rather opts for production by the masses. And it’s this decentralized approach that I believe India’s sustainable fashion scene holds the key to.

On a visit to Delhi to visit a slew of sustainable fashion designers, I found myself in Shahpur Jat Village: a market rife with brand and designer headquarters alongside artisan workshops consisting of spinners, weavers, embroiderers, dyers, patternmakers and many other building blocks of the fashion industry.

It was here I visited Turn Black Studio, a brand selling pieces made from classic fabrics like cotton, linen, silk– all in the color black, leading the viewer to focus on the delicate features of structure, silhouette, to sheerness. The storefront leads to its own independent workshop where spinning wheels are in motion alongside master weavers that bring thread to fabric. In the corner of the workshop lies a towering mountain of black bags, full of fabric scraps that the brand’s founder, Nutan, had saved since the brand’s conception– soon to be used for a new venture in upcycling fabric scraps into home decor accessories.

Around the corner is Joskai Studio, a label inspired by its founder Sujaya’s Assamese heritage. Their handloom creations work with the grassroots level artisans of the ethnic communities of Morigaon district and Sualkuchi village in Assam, sourcing local fabrics like handwoven mulberry and eri silk, creating motifs reminiscent of India’s Northeast.

Another turn leads me to Little Things Studio, whose varied pieces– think power pantsuits, saris, exaggerated collar button-ups– are made from textiles spanning khadi denim to a silk-like material made from orange peel waste; a nod to tradition and contemporary textile innovation alike.

An amalgamation of different identities, both sartorially and regionally, lives here in Shahpur Jat– just one market reminding us of the multiplicity of voices that dismantle the notion of India, and Indian fashion, as monoliths. Decentralizing fashion allows us to achieve regional context in a country as vast as India.

India holds the key for ideological change if we choose to contextualize our fashion industry in the richness of our nation’s biodiversity, history of celebration of artisanal and handloom industries, and sheer diversity of communities around the nation that put this into practice.