The idea behind the sustainable and craft-driven indigenous label Inkriti was to create awareness about the vast and untapped world of Indian textiles and craft. Founded by Matrika, who has a strong background in textiles, and Sonu, a chartered accountant with a deep love for Indian crafts, Inkriti aims at making crafts accessible through their gender-neutral garments for all shapes and sizes. Impacting about 25 artisanal families, and working mainly around Ajrakh, Kala Cotton, Handloom, bandhani, and tie and dye, Matrika and Sonu co-design their fabrics with artisans from the remotest rural pockets of our country, creating timeless, functional, and affordable garments.
“The Indian youth wants to wear something meaningful as well as attractive and interesting and our outfits are for the thinking, craft-loving, culturally aware, environmentally conscious, inclusive and experimental individuals, who are at the same time crazy, unreasonable, erratic, unpredictable and wacky,” say Matrika and Sonu, as they take us through their very first collection, Shuruaat, or, the beginning.
What’s Shuruaat all about?
The crafts that we worked with for Shuruaat include Ajrakh (hand-block printing craft), Bandhani (traditional tie-dye technique of India), Kala cotton Handloom craft of Kutch and various other tie-dye techniques. This collection marks the beginning of a revolution. In a world where fashion and textiles succumb to fast-moving trends, we have taken a stance to create products that are evergreen and timeless to honour the artisans who have spent months creating each fabric with their hands. This thought process is at the core of our design methodology.
We chose the sky to be our inspiration since it represents the connection we share with the artisans. Even though we live in different places, we are united under the same sky. Sky symbolises homecoming for us -- a constant reminder of home wherever we go. We represent the sky through different traditional crafts. The colourful sunrise and sunset are depicted through natural dyes used in the hand block printing of Ajrakh. We used natural indigo to represent the shades of the sky through various bandhani and tie-dye techniques. Also drawing inspiration from the sky's soothing soft embrace, we used different textures of handloom cotton. Shuruaat is also a celebration of the places we've been to and the sense of belonging that we experienced under the expansive sky.
How different are Inkriti's silhouettes from the other existing Indo-western fusion clothing label?
Our inspiration for gender-neutral clothing came from our tagline -- the Indian way of sustainable thinking. Saris and dhotis are sustainable because they aren’t restricted to any size or gender and can be worn and styled in multiple ways. Taking inspiration from this, we decided to create such silhouettes that are evergreen and timeless as well as fresh and stylish. We don’t believe in following fashion trends and our innovations percolate the fabric, design as well as silhouettes.
We prefer to position our clothing as gender-neutral rather than gender-fluid, emphasising inclusivity and versatility in our designs. To ensure great fitting we have used well-placed pleats, reversible cuffs, utility pockets, all-time favourite collars, innovative garment construction techniques and a lot more.
How do you incorporate sustainability into your label?
Our tagline is The Indian Way of Sustainable and this happens in two ways. First, the knowledge and skills of these crafts are passed down through generations. It's such that the world family is involved in the process. Second, as consumers, handcrafted products have always held a special place in people’s lives, whether as heirlooms that are passed or they often have an emotional connection to different customs and traditions. Hence, crafts play a very important role in social and cultural sustainability. Inkriti is a holistically sustainable brand and this is how we are working towards all three pillars of sustainability: - Environmental: Crafts are by default sustainable as locally available resources are used to create masterpieces.
Our collection includes Kala Cotton, handwoven cotton, naturally dyed Ajrakh, and naturally dyed tie and dye fabrics. Our products are organic, sustainable, vegan and handmade. - Economic: Crafts are the second largest occupation in India after farming. We are empowering traditional Indian artisans and generating new demand for these crafts by introducing them in new and modern formats which are relevant for everybody. Social: We pay fair pay wages to all our stakeholders. Maintaining the safety and security of all our artisans and stitching partners is of utmost importance to us.
Price on request. On inkriticrafts.com