How can luxury fashion be truly plant-based?

Two textile scientists are tackling this question head on with their brand JIWYA

Fashion is a form of expression. The capitalist economy has successfully trained consumers and their psychology that this expression needs a new face everyday! Result is, we are drowning in styles and trends and seasons. This has successfully made the textile industry the third largest polluter and contributing 8-10% global carbon emissions, significantly contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. Needless to say, this impact is going to increase if we don’t act now. The one liner reason is: using fossil fuel derived raw materials and rearing animals for fashion. Fibres like polyester, nylon, spandex etc. shed microplastics equivalent to 50 billion plastic bottles a year and do not degrade in landfills for hundreds of years. Every year, 5 billion animals are used only for fashion and textile production. This includes leather, fur, wool, silk, down.

Just like the food industry, the solution lies in simple resources already in abundance on our planet-plants!

While fast fashion is very easily blamed for the woes, the luxury fashion industry is no saint! However, fast fashion not only copies luxury styles but also relies on its trends and forecasts to successfully lure the consumer into buying more. Luxury fashion, despite its current emissions, does have a pedestal and a headstart. It is always linked to making higher quality products, ones that are curated and designed to last longer. Given their higher price, they also invoke the ideology of caring better for each piece. With its head start, luxury fashion has an important responsibility, to clean up for its consumers, but also to propagate the psychology of mindful consumption.

How can luxury fashion be truly plant-based, without using any greenwashing jargon, without the wordplay of x% plants or renewable resources. Being true and simple-100% plant based.

1. Let talk raw materials and their sources

The Chinar Handmade Pseudo Kaftan by JIWYA. Designed as a Gender Neutral piece by Aishwarya Lahariya, uses three heritage textile arts by awarded artisans, took 90days to hand-curate.

Say no to animals, no to oil based, microplastic shedding fibres.
Choose native, renewable plants. Responsibly grown cotton, linen, jute, bamboo, banana, hemp, nettle. There are many possibilities.
Recycling- textile to textile recycling might be the way to combat the garments already out in the ecosystem.
The milder devil of Viscose: Viscose is man made cellulose derived from cutting trees and making it into pulp. The pulp is then used to spin cellulosic yarns. Unless it is 100% textile to textile recycled Viscose, there is no justification to cutting forests for fabrics.
JIWYA, launched its current collection with native plants- Jute, Linen and a local variety of cotton, known as kala cotton- (kala in hindi means dark). That grows in drought prone lands with little water and no pesticides, this variety of cotton is slightly duller than conventional cotton, hence the name. The brand is ready to launch lesser known and regenerative fibres like banana, bamboo, hemp, nettle etc.

2. Colour me plants

Synthetic dyes, no matter what their type, primarily come from fossil fuels and are responsible for a myriad of ailments to the workers and water bodies.
Relying on plant colours, sourced from local forest ecosystems or ones made in the lab might be the future. One has to note that plant colours include- vegetable peels, fruit peels, flowers, fruits, dry barks, and roots of small plants like turmeric.
Plant colours do not require heavy usage of chemicals and salts used in conventional dyeing and require a fraction of water used for conventional dyeing.
If no added salts or chemicals are present, leftover water from plant colour dyeing can actually be used to nourish soil or large gardens.
At JIWYA, the founder being textile scientists, have optimised recipes for plant colour dyeing using plant-based mordants and regularly feed the leftover water to their garden, conscious of the ingredients cycle. The brownie point, most of these plant dyes either come from everyday food waste (onion peels, pomegranate peels) or are generally sourced from local forest ecosystems empowering small businesses and their sustainable practices.

3. Softness over smoothness

Saying no to synthetic finishes like repellents- stain, water, oil, wrinkle, is a big step in healthier textiles. All these functional finishes use a group of chemicals PFAS, also called forever chemicals, as they never biodegrade and pose a variety of health hazards.
JIWYA, proudly, doesn’t use any synthetic finish. Brands can rightfully take a step and denounce usage of toxic finishes and promote using the natural softness of plant fibres over the plastic-y smooth finish created by chemical coating, often a derivative of crude oil.

4. All that glitters is actually microplastics

Glitters, sequins, beads, pearls, and all shiny-beady embellishments materials on clothing are actually-plastic. Their small size makes them the perfect avenue to shed more microplastics.

JIWYA uses scraps from their own production line to make buttons, embellishments and other colourful elements that can decorate a garment. JIWYA is zero waste in its production and utilises all production scrap to be upcycled.

The Goraiya Handmade Dress by JIWYA. Designed by Aishwarya Lahariya, uses three heritage textile arts by awarded artisans, took 90days to hand-curate.

5. A plant stitch not a plastic sweep

Often neglected but equally important are fixtures and supplies-stitching threads, fixtures like zippers, buttons etc. They are all made of plastic. They are all small and easy sources of microplastics.
At JIWYA, buttons are sourced from local communities that use coconut shells and broken wood to make buttons. Cotton stitching thread, of various strengths is sourced with much effort to ensure no plastics. Zippers are replaced with more body friendly upcycled-strings that also adapt to slight changes in the wearer's body.

6. What’s in a label? Ignored plastic

For one, brands rely on excessive labelling. Brand label, care label, size label at multiple locations, plastic loops used to put these labels, adhesive used to paste in on the garment! The list doesn’t end. While some of these are important for regulations, not all are needed. But all are made with cheap quality polyester that is often scratchy to the skin and needless to say, a landfill resident shredding microplastics.
First step is reducing unnecessary labels and second, making them in natural materials- plant fibres, recycled paper, cloth strings.
At JIWYA, brand and care labels use unbleached cotton and certified biodegradable inks. The cloth tag is recycled paper printed with certified biodegradable inks, attached with a jute string. No other labels are used.

7. Nestle me in plants not suffocate in plastics

Packaging for fashion and many other consumer products relies on plastics only. A single use plastic bag around the garment, then packed in a bigger plastic bag, bubbled wraps and then taped with single use plastic tape. All of which are then thrown away, making their way to the oceans and animals becoming a choking hazard.
Bio-compostable packaging, although coming from natural sources, doesn’t compost easily, only in industrial composters.
At JIWYA, an unbleached cotton tote bag is used to house the garment, given to the consumer to be used for portable use later. This is then packed in a bio-film certified to be home-compostable. If needed, recycled honeycomb paper is used to cushion and then packed in a corrugated paper box, sealed with paper tape. All ingredients are compostable, but also easy to reuse to store and carry things.

8. Put me in the cradle, take me to the grave or back in the cradle

While brands may be starting to think about material from an environmental point of view, they still haven’t taken account of unlimited production. 92 million tonnes-that is how much textile waste is created annually! Apparel consumption around the world in 2019- 62 million metric tonne, 87% of which is incinerated or sent to landfills, less than 1% of which is recycled.

Mindful, slow consumption, designs that are timeless, lesser but meaningful pieces created to last longer-all steps that luxury fashion already likes. Just needs higher vigour.
JIWYA is a slow fashion brand that creates limited edition, made to measure and curated designs. This is to ensure the consumer gets a piece perfectly made to their measurements. At the same time, the RE:JIWYA program gives a lifetime subscription of Repair, Revamp and Reintroduction, taking responsibility for each JIWYA product through and after its lifetime.

9. Who made me?

Fast fashion and often luxury fashion too uses sweatshops and unethical labour to produce their goods.
Luxury fashion can be the torchbearer of transparency, showing the craftspeople who make their products.
At JIWYA, the website not only shows the entire supply chain but lists all artisans it works with with their name and pictures and locations. The brand sources authentic, heritage textile art, thus impacting 100s of grassroot small businesses. The final design, manufacturing, dyeing happens at the HQ, with the small team of founders and production associates, also listed in the web.

10. Say it only if you mean it

While a brand may not be able to take all steps, it has to be clear in which steps it took and avoid greenwashing! Brands are eager to introduce policies that increase their own consumption and they readily throw words like sustainability, vegan, organic without actually giving quantitative details.
At JIWYA, we are PETA certified. And we are constantly working to get on brand rating indexes to measure our impact and allow us to do even better. Saying only what they mean and use, you will not find us using the words sustainable, vegan, eco-friendly etc. The brand says 100% plant-based, zero waste and handmade. That is what it stands for!

All said and done, the above steps are not just changes, they amount for an entire shift in business model. One that puts the planet and people at centre instead of unlimited unchecked growth.

Aishwarya Lahariya, co-founder JIWYA

15 June 2024, Nashik, India