Unkultured may only be a couple of years old, but the sustainable menswear label has consciously worked towards the idea of inclusivity, since it lies at the core of millennial culture. The casual wear label has consistently curated a line-up which allows their young clientele to shop for themselves and their dads from the same collection, which is not something most young brands pay attention to. Unkultured has garnered a lot of attention with their quirky prints and their photoshoots which feature regular people and not professional models.
We spoke to Hemant Malik, the mind behind Unkultured, about the ethos of the label and their new summer line-up:
Tell us how Unkultured began. What was the idea behind the label?
The journey actually started with the word ‘Unkultured’ itself because at some point all millennials have been deemed ‘uncultured’ in the eyes of the society, who are still not ready to accept the new culture and its aspects upfront. We decided to take a stand on behalf of all the millennials and say it loud and clear that if you still think a girl smoking a cigarette or a man loving another man is not your culture then we are proud to be called ‘Unkultured’.
We have always worked towards making this a label which any consumer can relate to. One of the ways we ensure that is by shooting with regular people rather than professional models.
Tell us about your upcoming summer line-up
Our upcoming summer line up is our yearly collection which we call the Time of the Year collection. We have majorly focused on fresh prints; we have tried to bridge the gap between a 20-year-old and a 35-year-old when it comes to picking up a shirt. For example, we have tried minimalistic prints on a classic blue striped shirt. All the shirts from our upcoming collection are good to wear from desk to dinner.
How does Unkultured approach sustainability?
Being responsible towards nature and society has always been one of our priorities and we believe being sustainable is not a task, it’s a lifestyle. So to play our part we make sure to use organic cotton for our tees and we had used khadi for our last collection of shirts. Apart from choosing our fabric responsibly we also work towards a zero waste goal and we make sure we don’t use any kind of plastic for our shipments.
And we believe very strongly that adapting a sustainable lifestyle as a brand is not expensive so we don’t put a burden on customers’ pockets by playing the sustainability card.
Tell us if the lockdown and the COVID crisis affected your business in any way.
This COVID crisis has affected a lot of businesses in many terms and we are no different but as a team, we have tried our best to stay positive during this time. We have utilised this time in introspection of our journey and planning our next moves and I must mention that our customers stayed with us during this hard time. But we can’t ignore the fact that the upcoming couple of months is going to be tough for us as a bootstrapped start-up.