To become a Vogue Business Member and receive the Sustainability Edit newsletter, click here.
Ōshadi Collective may be best known as an Indian farming cooperative, highly valued in sustainable fashion circles for not just talking about regenerative agriculture but practising and scaling it. However, Ōshadi is also a fashion brand with a vision and design aesthetic of its own.
That side of the business went dormant back in 2017 when the fashion industry took an interest in “developing mindful textiles” with Ōshadi, says founder Nishanth Chopra. The company’s profile was elevated thanks in large part to a project with British designer Stella McCartney, which prompted other brands to reach out. Ōshadi also received support from the non-profit Fibershed to expand its regenerative cotton initiative.
The result, says Chopra, was that the business had little bandwidth to focus on the brand side of things. Neither agriculture nor manufacturing is an easy lift for a small business with limited access to capital — staying on top of both left no room to focus on design and brand development and management.
Now, Ōshadi is back on the fashion scene. A new collection launching on its e-commerce site on Saturday, named Mind, Body and Soil, is made entirely from cotton grown by farmers using regenerative practices. It was then ginned, spun, woven and sewn by local partners — spinners, weavers, dressmakers and tailors. Hand-quilted jackets, shirts, trousers and shorts come in monochrome as well as bold patterns in earthy toned — but not drab — colourways, from red clay to yellow ochre, some made with traditional ikat weaving and block-printing techniques. The lookbook was photographed on the farm where the cotton was grown, with the clothes modelled by cotton farmer Virak Sha and Ōshadi logistics manager (and former farmer) Kumutha in addition to Tamil models Anugraha Natarajan and Bharath.
Chopra started Ōshadi for many reasons; helping poor farmers in India was not one of them. “People look at things from Italy or France, the same thing in a different setting in a different country and they’re like, ‘Wow, it was made in Italy’. Then you see the same thing in India and people are like, ‘Oh, I’m trying to help the poor farmer’,” he says. “Every time a brown person is looked at as a cobbler or a weaver, people are always feeling sorry [for them]. Empathy is not what that person deserves. What that person deserves is respect for his craftsmanship and skills.”
Chopra’s family has a decades-long history in textile trading and manufacturing. He was drawn to a career in fashion, but he wanted to chart a new path. Instead of using textile production as a means to earn a living and meet basic needs, he set out to build a supply chain that, from start to finish, would be “less mechanised and more humane”.
He used farmers as models and a cotton farm for the photo shoot, but as he explains it, these were not decisions made to propagate feel-good consumerism. In fact, they represent the realities of a supply chain that Chopra says needs more recognition, respect and equity — more genuine relationships, fewer transactional or extractive ones.
“It’s abysmal. Imagine you’re making things every day and you want to take it back to your child or your family and you can’t afford to. It’s a very crazy system we’ve made,” he says. “It’s the same thing with organic food. People who grow it cannot afford it. People here who make the clothes, they feel very distant. They look at a garment and think, that’s not [for] us, that’s not something we can wear. That’s what the idea behind the shoot was — to change this narrative. The farmer has grown it, he gets to wear it.“
Exactly where in the market does Ōshadi fit? Wherever customers want it to, Chopra declares. “For us, the market is local but also international. We have our own design aesthetics,” he says.
What matters is that the clothes serve a purpose, for both customers and the people involved in making and getting them to market, he says. “It’s about building a community. And, if people like you and think that it’s worthwhile and is beautiful design, everything else is icing on the cake.”
Full image credit – Photographer: Ashish Chandra; Models: Anugraha Natarajan, Bharath, Kumutha and Virak Sha; hair and makeup: Ongkie Tan; art director: Manou; agency: Feat Artists for Anugraha & Bharath.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.