A ‘good’ sense of fashion

A ‘good’ sense of fashion

I was a Sari was inspired by the works of Bangladeshi Nobel Laureate and founder of Grameen Bank, Prof Yunus. The soulful and sustainable project was started by Stefano Funari who wanted to do more than just come up with stylish pieces. Funari conceptualised I was a Sari in Milan and gave it wings in Dharavi, Mumbai, in collaboration with Community Outreach Programme in 2016. Since then the brand has been creating sustainable products. Talking to Poornima Pande, director of Marketing and Communications, I was a Sari, we find out more about the entire upcycling process and how it helps transform the lives of women artisans.

Core philosophy
At the core, Pande explains that I was a Sari is an eco-ethical approach towards fashion that is styling old sarees in a new way and along the way, also empowering women artisans from Mumbai by giving them respectable jobs.

“I was a Sari is a cycle that is redefining the style of the ones who decide to wear our products which in turn gives a boost to our women to produce more products using more of the discarded sarees and earning for a better future,” adds Pande. She believes that this chain of supply and demand though based on a business model is more of a soulful purpose. “You save the Earth by reducing pollution in a way and automatically join the cause of empowering women who really need that extra boost of confidence — it’s a win-win situation,”  she explains.

Pande points out that the founder of I was a Sari believes that in a world where there are tens of thousands of fashion brands already available, people don’t really need a new brand. He is of the opinion that we now need brands that come with a soulful purpose, ones which care not just about fashion and design but also about the people and the planet.

Helping transform lives
At the centre of I was a Sari, is an initiative that everyone talks about but very few people work towards it.  
 
“Through the brand, the women from the local communities are learning and utilising the skills of tailoring and hand embroidery for income generation to sustain their households, while gaining self-confidence and a new lease of life. To achieve this, we have collaborated with our NGO partners in Thane, Dharavi, Jogeshwari and Andheri,” explains Pande.

The products have been listed within an affordable range of up to Rs 2,500 in order to keep the initiative alive. “Our target is to employ many more underprivileged women over a regular period and the more we produce, the more number of hours of employment we can offer to our women artisans,” she says.

Although it’s a not-for-profit organisation, the organisation ploughs back its entire profit into empowering its women workers and building the brand. 

The brand is still working on a roadmap, where women from the local community will operate as a self help group and ultimately manage the entire show. From being housewives to being employed to becoming entrepreneurs is the journey that the brand envisions for them.

No limits
In collaboration with Gucci’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) platform, Gucci Equilibrium, Gucci’s local suppliers — the embroidery houses in Mumbai taught the women artisans from I was a Sari hand embroidery.

“This was a significant step because all the traditional embroidery houses in India are male dominated and the experience of visiting an export house was a first for many of the women, boosting their self-confidence and skilling them in sustainable art that will help them leave an impression of their own in the world of fashion,” says Pande.  

As a result, the brand’s first embroidery collection Now I Can was launched in November 2018.

Being very close to the Lakmé Fashion Week (LFW), the sustainable brand decided to make most of the opportunity and began concentrating on product development for the fashion event. 

Consequently, four looks were created and showcased at LFW 2018. These distinct looks involved 5 upcycled materials, 15 artisans and 500 hours of embroidery for the women artisans. 

The upcycled collection at LFW was 80 per cent sustainable, using discarded sarees, seatbelts, tarpaulin, deadstock fabric and leftover embroidery material.

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