Sustainable and Responsible Choices with Kushni
Sustainable Luxury is about discernment & responsible choices. It is about having the knowledge and the eye for what is of value.
We liken innovation and craftsmanship today to luxury because it is what is soulful in a world of indifferently produced commodities. It is the rare and the priced because of the human effort to push forth cultural expression & skill endowed to create our pieces.
Sustainable choices and process are at the core of our brand.
From recycled biodegradable minimal packaging to the artisanal communities we support & work with, we intend to keep learning, sharing the knowledge with you, improving and expanding our community and environmental friendly practices.
KUSHNI brand ethos:
1.Support and Empower communities and crafts
While we truly value and support the rich elegance that laborious heritage handcrafts add to clothing, the harsh reality behind these handcrafts lies in the poor and precarious quality of life most artisans in our country live under.
Our brand is an attempt to create beautiful functional clothing with these handcrafts that can act as a medium to bring both monetary and artistic value to artisanal communities.
2. Pure and Renewable/ Regenerated Fabrics only
We only use fabrics made from natural and 100% pure raw materials like cotton, cotton silk, silk organza and handloom cotton and chanderi silk.
We use absolutely NO polyester, nylon or acrylics, which form the backbone of fast fashion brands. While these fabrics may lower the product cost, they are artificially made and require huge volumes of environmentally harmful chemicals to process, leaving behind wastage and ultimately ending up in landfills due to their poor quality.
But just using natural fabrics is not enough, our aim is to replace all our raw material usage in the near future with organic, recycled and sustainability regenerated innovative textile options which further our journey towards becoming a carbon neutral and climate positive brand. Sustainable options for the fashion industry are unfortunately not yet mainstream and are an expensive and complicated affair. However, this is a challenge that we are happily willing to take up because we believe it is for the future we are looking to create.
Achieving Carbon Neutrality and eventually climate positivity:
A. Measure
Identify our carbon footprint based on all aspects of our business, including suppliers. Determine annual CO2 emissions and where they occur so there is a full understanding of our footprint.
B. Reduce
With a full understanding of our footprint, it is possible to see where reductions can be made. In-house impact may be easier to decrease through more efficient operations, technology and streamlining processes. The supply chain may be more difficult to reduce and may require switching to greener suppliers of materials and energy.
C. Offset
Most of the time decreasing emissions to zero may not be possible at once. However, by any means, this should not be a reason for stopping. In such situations, we can still find other ways to negate CO2 through other projects such as supporting renewable energy generation, plant or protect forests or replace wood or fossil fuel stoves and heaters in economically depressed areas with cleaner options. It may not bring the corporate footprint down completely but it reduces emissions elsewhere and offsets the operational overage.
3. Fair Price for artisans
Artisans in our country that have learnt painstaking crafts through generations are forced to either change professions or sell their crafts at menial prices because they don’t get sustainable prices for them.
How dismal is this situation where an ARTIST lives a pauper’s or a daily wagers life because his community doesn’t value his cultural art?
Our only attempt is to bring the true value of handcrafted products to consumers and artisans. We pay our artisans fair and sustainable prices for their time consuming and laborious crafts that can enable them to live a dignified life. We work with the best master craftsmen in the country who we trust to not compromise on skill quality and purity.
We trust our consumers to identify and appreciate the value of hours of labour and skill that goes into each hand made product.