Bridging Cultures: How Co-Designing With Artisans Helps Bring Fashion’s Sustainable Past Into Its Future
CFC Member Spotlight: Maithili Chodankar
Author and interviewer: Stella Hertantyo
Maithili Chodankar is a craft connector and founder of the Franco-Indian artisanal & ethical fashion brand — Buno Behen. Her work focuses on weaving connections between Indian craftswomen and the world. As a craft connector, Maithili consults small brands in the Global North who wish to collaborate with artisanal communities in India and create a more inclusive fashion industry.
I interviewed Maithili in the Conscious Fashion Collective Membership as part of our Member Spotlight interview series.
Below are some of the highlights from the conversation, including:
The connections between craft, climate, and sustainable fashion,
How brands can ethically co-design garments in partnership with artisan communities, and
Why storytelling is an essential element of fashion activism.
What led you to work at the intersection of fashion and sustainability?
I was born and raised in Mumbai, India. Love brought me to France and I launched Buno Behen over here.
What led me to work at the intersection of fashion and sustainability is my family and my roots. I was raised in a family of five women. Fashion has always been communal for me in the sense that growing up, my dresses were always made by my grandmothers.
Fast fashion came to India quite late. The biggest mall in Mumbai — the biggest city in India — was established in the early 2000s. Up until then, clothes were made by local tailors. You’d go to your local market, find the fabrics, and then go to a tailor to have the garment custom-made. This is the kind of fashion I have always known and grew up with.
Unfortunately, globalization brought fast fashion. Once this happened, everyone forgot our inherent ways of producing clothing which is a part of our culture.
After a few personal tragedies in my family, I was questioning my life choices. This was also around the time of the Rana Plaza collapse. I watched the documentary “The True Cost” and that’s when I intentionally began looking into sustainable fashion.
I truly believe in fashion as an art form and way of expression. So my curiosity about sustainable fashion led me back to my roots. I wanted to understand how Indigenous communities in the Global South created and related to fashion. That’s the journey I’ve been on ever since with Buno Behen. I’m trying to revive this communal sense of fashion.
What have you learned about the true roots of sustainable fashion through your work with Buno Behen?
My grandmother was upcycling before it was even a word. She was obsessed. Nothing would go to waste. She would use every scrap of fabric to make rugs and quilts out of old saris.
The concept of sustainable fashion has already existed in different cultures long before it became a movement. I think we have to return to this knowledge and wisdom that already existed. It may not be called “sustainable fashion”, “upcycling”, or “circularity”, but we have to give credit to these ancient practices.
What are the connections between craft, climate, and sustainable fashion?
I believe that most Indigenous crafts are the original sustainable practices. If you look at these crafts, you’ll see that they’re inherently sustainable, because they place value on their community, their local ecosystems, and their culture. And they’re preserving all of this in the form of something artistic.
For example, one of the collectives that we work with at Buno Behen is called Kullvi Whims, based in the mountain town of Naggar Himachal. They use local wool bought from local shepherds who raise their sheep on the slopes of local mountains. Everything is produced within the community and each person involved is valued highly.
For me this is a perfect example of regenerative fashion. It means returning to the source, looking at who is producing the fibers you are working with, and how this is being done in harmony with community, nature, and culture. It’s about building local ecosystems.
But I also want to point out that we should not romanticize the lives of people who live in these places and practice indigenous techniques. This is a reminder to myself and my brand too. We have to be clear that this kind of artisanal work is not super lucrative. Only a few artisans can sustain their lives on these crafts — most of them have to have supplementary income.
As a result, the life they live — even though it’s keeping sustainable practices alive — is not one they wish for their children. They don’t want their children to struggle.
While I believe that talking about garment worker rights and living wages is essential in sustainable fashion, I think it’s also important to extend these conversations to include craft communities. They also need our support and if we can bring legislation into that, it would be a brilliant way to make these crafts an attractive livelihood opportunity for younger generations. This would allow these practices to live on.
Can you tell us more about your Buno Behen Co-Design Program and what inspired you to start it?
The Co-Design Program was inspired by two things. Firstly, my mission is to connect the Indian craft community — especially women — with designers, artists, and brands in the Global North. Secondly, being a solopreneur, I was tired of working alone. I have always worked in teams and this is the first time in my life that I’m working entirely alone.
A lot of luxury fashion brands already work with craftspeople in India, often when it comes to embroidery. Up until recently, this wasn’t commonly known. But I wanted to make working with Indian craftspeople more accessible.
In the past, this has been tricky because artisans work informally. Many of them work from home and don’t have an internet connection. So communicating with artisans as a brand in another country isn’t easy. As someone who knows the craft industry in India well, and grew up there, I felt I could make this process easier.
The more I talk to brands, the more I realize they’re excited by this opportunity. They say they have been trying to work with artisans, but there are so many barriers to entry.
India has over 3000 crafts and working with designers in the Global North allows for us to create sustainable livelihoods for artisans — while also ensuring that these crafts don’t disappear. I love creating garments and finding new artisan collectives. It felt like a win-win situation.
Plus, sometimes designers have a superiority complex and assume that they know more than the artisans they work with. I also created this program to push back at that and ensure that the design process is collaborative and reciprocal. We always make sure that the artisans have their say included in the process.
How do you weave ethics into the way you approach digital marketing?
I got into marketing when I was 22. I didn’t give it much thought and digital marketing was a new field back then. I liked fashion and writing and being an artist was not an option — according to my parents. So I figured marketing was creative enough for my interests.
Just after I started in the industry, digital marketing exploded beyond anyone’s comprehension. That’s also when I started questioning my ethics and wondering why I was promoting brands that I would never buy from.
I believe that legislation is needed to make digital marketing more ethical. Certain parts of digital marketing are heavily regulated — like gambling, porn, and cigarettes — and there are strict parameters on how you can advertise and what language you can use. But fashion and lifestyle marketing doesn’t have this yet. You can get away with almost anything and say whatever you want.
There is new legislation coming in Europe — such as the Green Claims Directive — which is a huge step in the right direction. But these regulations also have nuances. For example, some small brands and artisan collectives produce sustainably, yet don’t have the money to get certifications and audits done. The legislation needs to take these kinds of businesses into account.
As people working in marketing, we have the responsibility to push back at unethical practices in this industry. Many marketers hesitate, because they feel like it’s not their product. For example, they didn’t create Instagram. Yet there are so many things that Instagram and other social media platforms are getting away with.
Marketers have to become activists at some point and use their skills to challenge the status quo.
What is your advice for others who want to use storytelling to create positive change in the world?
When I first became interested in activism, I was hesitant to call myself an “activist”, because I felt like I wasn’t doing enough on the ground to call myself one. Then, the more I started reading about activism, I realized that it can take so many different forms. For me, the type of activism I resonate most with is art activism and storytelling.
I think storytelling helps us resonate with people, places, and cultures more than formal research ever could. Everyone has a story. Everyone has learned something in their life. We're all a product of the experiences that we've had. People will always resonate with your truth.
Storytelling is a beautiful medium for sharing your truth. You can just start talking. Mostly, my activism is like this. When I think back on some of the toughest experiences I’ve been through, beyond the therapy and medication, it was the stories of random people on the internet that had the most profound effect on me. That’s why I think we undervalue the power of stories and the chain reaction they can have.
Storytelling brings human elements to these big complex problems. To make a change, we need to see ourselves in these problems. We also need to make changemaking feel more accessible, because not everyone can commit their entire life to one cause — but everybody can share their experience or amplify somebody else's experience. We shouldn’t see this as less important than other forms of activism.
We need less gatekeeping and more ways to make activism accessible to everyone.
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