What is Truly Slow Fashion? Talking Sustainability, Textiles and Legacy with Vidhi Agarwal of ‘Meiraas’

In all of my exposure to Indian sustainable fashion labels, I’ve often come across an amusing amount tokenism and greenwashing. A tendency akin to students wanting to pass an examination by doing the bare minimum, most ‘slow’ and ‘sustainable’ brands turn out not to be as hunky-dory and ethical as they market themselves to be. The indigenous, slow techniques are present; but dig deeper and you find kaam-chalao (half-hearted) craftsmanship done quickly or sparsely on mill-made powerloom fabrics. The artisan
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Kantha – Embroidery from the cradle to the grave!

We’ve all encountered a kantha – be it saree, dupatta, suit, cushion or blanket. But a little known fact that differentiate’s this eastern Indian tradition from several other embroidery crafts is that there lies a profound functionality behind it, for it was in it’s truest essence a craft tradition of the poor. Discarded textile scraps sewn together with a running stitch – the basic foundational block of needlework – to create something new. One of India’s oldest embroidery traditions, the … Read Full

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