You cannot have real environmental or ethical sustainability without transparency. It is the only way to shine a light in dark places- and our industry has plenty of those. It is not going to work with sweeping statements and subtle marketing claims about sustainability and ethics in order to appeal to the consumer's conscience to sell more stuff. Not anymore. Hopefully.
Himanshi x
I was dreading too much to write this, to convey the right message with the right words. At one point, making sentences out of all that was happening inside (and outside) my head was almost paralyzing. Anyhow, I was reminded how Whakato came into picture, how I just wanted to try to create something the honest way. Try. That is what I will do here.
So consider this a hello. A welcome. A nice hug. A fist bump amongst friends. This is the place to learn, educate, dream, share, inspire, rant, and more. And since I mentioned honesty, what better way would be to start than by telling about the trials and tribulations of it all? Thomas Sigsgaard said, "The most sustainable way is to not make things. The second most sustainable way is to make something very useful and to solve a problem that hasn’t been solved." But I became more aware of my ignorance and lack of knowledge as I learned more about what environmental sustainability meant for the fashion businesses.
Back in 2019, after a lot of research, we decided to work with alternative plant textiles. The first fabric that got approved was extracted manually from lotus stems. It was our first step to building a "sustainable brand" Now, I'm willing to bet you have come across thousands of brands claiming that. Yet, in my heart, we knew it was different. We dived deep with full disclosure as to how each of our pieces came to be. Every thread, every fiber, and every button is accounted for because we have nothing to hide. But we did hide a few things from you guys. We started as three partners with little savings which came down to two partners doing two jobs to make this work. With lotus fiber, there is minimal water usage since the stems retain moisture within for a few days. The extraction has to be done in that limited time (and manually) making it an expensive fiber. We also initially had a few production hiccups with the quality and fabric weave but overall we felt it had a lot of promise if we could keep testing it
Completely and deliberately skipping the lemon difficult covid times, I'll now introduce you to this little monster inside almost all of our clothing- The fusing. It is one of the most important and state-of-the-art accessory materials that currently lacks review and exploration. To give ease of stitching and fabric stability, interlining material onto which the thermoplastic resin is coated, sprayed, or printed is hidden inside collars, cuffs, and plackets. It was a big no for Whakato designs since day one. But to our surprise, no tailor was willing to stitch our garments without it. They were not ready to compromise on their ease for our mere consciously made shirt.
Our weaver had to be taught multiple times to not use chemicals for post hand loom shrinkage wash. Our button supplier found it stupid to not coat our coconut shell buttons with chemicals. The vegetable dyers were producing a different shade every time. Our courier guy refused to ship our packages without plastic wrapping around our biodegradable scarf. We couldn't find polyester-free tags and labels. Finding a vendor for certified organic cotton sewing thread was a hassle. Multi-designer labels rejected us for having a smaller number of designs. As designers, we had to make sacrifices due to the unavailability of ethically made materials and trims. Heck, that's not exactly how I should be talking about 'Who made our clothes?'. With new fibers, the problem isn’t the science, it’s convincing people that there’s a healthy demand for alternatives—and making sure there are zero compromises in performance. The industry has had a mental block, a stigma around these alternatives, and so for a long time we didn’t even try. But we are now. And we wish for you to be a part of Whakato's process. I mean how should a customer, who's less familiar with the ins and outs of this business and product than we are, know any different? This is part of the reason I'm writing this post.
You cannot have real environmental or ethical sustainability without transparency. It is the only way to shine a light in dark places- and our industry has plenty of those. It is not going to work with sweeping statements and subtle marketing claims about sustainability and ethics in order to appeal to the consumer's conscience to sell more stuff. Not anymore. Hopefully.
Himanshi x
