Sonica Sarna is making big moves in the fashion industry. Her three dimensional take on sustainability is focused on shedding light on Indian designs and prints. Her experimentation with natural dyeing, indigenous cotton and block printing are just some of the work in her repertoire, with more sustainable practices in the process of conceptualization. #ProjectThrive is an example of how Sonica is focusing her organization’s resources in the intervention of the fast fashion supply chain. Let Jejune Magazine help you learn more about Sonica Sarna and her organization - Sonica Sarna Design.

Where are you based?
We are located in New Delhi, India. This is where our headquarters are located. However, we work with artisan communities all over the country.

Can you tell us a little bit about Sonica Sarna Design and what inspired it?
I studied fashion design and began my career in the factory environment in fast fashion. Very early in my career I understood that the paradigm of producing clothing at minimal cost in poor countries and mass manufacturing them for the global marketplace is responsible for not only global poverty but also environmental degradation. Driving through worker slums and textile waste piles daily on my way to work was the primary reason that fundamentally changed my view towards fashion. From being an artist whose goal was to create beauty through my career in fashion, I now understood that the work I was doing was responsible for making the workers life poor and for slowly degrading the planet, both the soil as well as the water and the ecosystem from which materials were being extracted to create the fabrics mass manufactured and replaced on shelves month after month all over the world.

Long story short, several years of working with brands, artisan communities and textile mills across various countries help me learn to create effective solutions that were practical and applicable. Ultimately it all lead to my work as an activist and sustainability consultant, all my learnings are housed on my website (sonicasarna.com) where we share the latest sustainability research, products , masterclasses, consulting services for brands and much more. For brands to be able to change their buying and design habits such that they have a positive impact on human beings and the planet, reversing a lot of the damage that the fashion industry has been known to do over the past few decades.

Can you tell us how you are changing sustainability in fashion, and why this is important to you?
My work in fashion over the last two decades has crossed over into activism because my goal is to help make fashion a force for good. We work very deeply in the fashion supply chain, whether it is with artisans, whether it is with textile mills, dye houses or with the women in the supply chain and we look at the impact every piece of clothing making has on both the environment as well as on the people engaged in that process My goal is leave a legacy of having done some good with my abilities as an artist, and hopefully show the way to others who want to mobilize their individual skills as well as their communities to leave the planet slightly better place than they found it. What better way to be a good human being than making a real difference on your job every day? So even though we have lofty goals of social, environmental impact, sustainability is it personal to me. It’s about how the time that I spend at work with artisan communities, working on recycled materials or establishing new dye programs is my way of feeling a sense of purpose and value in my daily living.

In the past we spoke to you a bit about your project #projecthrive. Can you remind our readers about the mission?
As an organization, our goal is to have as a positive social-environmental impact in the fashion supply chain. As we look deeply into the fashion supply chain to understand how our products are made, one of the issue that I have encountered time and time again is that while women are a prominent force in various levels of the fashion supply chain, they are often underrepresented and unpaid for the work that they do. As such they are economically and socially impoverished, not credited for their contribution to product making and lose both respect and an opportunity for growth for themselves as well as for their daughters and future generations. One prime example of this is how all of the manufacturing factories in the New Delhi area employ, mostly men. Women are given neither the opportunity to train to become industrial level seamstresses nor do they then have the option of getting hired for those jobs and earning premium wages. Projecthrive is an opportunity for women who live in slums in the industrial area in Delhi to undergo paid internship where they learn how to sew, at an industrial level. At the end of that pay training program they acquire a hireable skill as a seamstress and can choose to work at any factory or continue to engage and be employed full time by our program. The goal of this program is to give women who have no other economic opportunity a choice and a path forward beyond very challenging lives. The women in our program have gone on to make real and lasting changes in their own lives and in the lives of their daughters as a result of being impacted by a program that empowers them in several ways.

How is it going? Do you have any success stories you would like to share?
Projecthrive has seen many ups and down through COVID. During that time many of the seamstress’s husbands lost their jobs and had to move back to the villages, You might have read about the largest rural migration across India that was noted in the news during COVID. But we ensured that the women retained their jobs with us since we choose not to lay off any of our employees through COVID lockdowns. The project continues to be the sole source of income for the women who work with us. One story that we are particularly proud of is one of our oldest seamstress Jamuna has now saved enough to be able to buy her own house because she and her husband are double income and her able to save money not only for the stability of a roof over their head, but also for the education of their daughter.

Lately you have been very focused on preserving indigenous artisanal textile traditions. You have been doing this through partnering with artisan communities to revive indigenous regenerative practices as means for both cultural preservation as well as human and environmental rights. Can you tell us a bit about this work and why you felt it was important?
I have been working with artisan community since 2008. The journey here is more personal than driven by business. Even though I am Indian, at the time I was living in the US and looking for a path forward in the fashion industry that was an alternative to mass manufacturing. I began to travel to rural India to explorer how traditional artisan communities lived, to connect with my culture, the communities, their roots and way of life. And to learn a lot more about how they made their clothing. The result of years of travelling to communities across India. Help me develop not only a personal connection with my own roots, but also answered many of the pressing questions about the future of the fashion industry that had been raised in my mind when I was working in the factory environment with global brands in the fast fashion industry. It seemed to me that when traditional artisanal communities produced something , whether it’s on handlooms or using traditional block printing or using natural dyes they do so not only while respecting their culture and their heritage, but also in balance with their environment, because they are working in the same region where they are living and also wearing the clothes that they are making. As such it becomes impossible to disconnect the clothing that you are wearing from your daily life and it becomes far harder to use and throw clothing in the manner in which it is being done all over the world now with no connection to the makers. A cure of this mindless consumption, which is a direct result of global marketing campaigns, is following the example of artisan communities who’s way of living is rooted in balance while respecting culture and the environment. As I have continued to partner with communities and imparted them skills that makes them ready for the international market place, my goal is to take traditional indigenous wisdom and perhaps through design interventions done through a contemporary lens make many of the skills of the artisans that are being rendered redundant by machine making and bringing them into a more contemporary light so that we can continue to redefine how we are dressing. So while one can produce large quantities of machine made cotton and degrade water tables and the soil, a balanced alternative is working with local indigenous communities, that are growing native varieties of cotton that need neither the fertilizer, nor chemicals and the very process of growing that cotton helps sequester carbon and regenerate soil. This is one of various examples where I have learnt that partnering with indigenous artisan communities with a modern lens might be a solution for the dire problems of environmental degradation and climate change that face us as a species today.

What is unique about indigenous artisanal textile traditions that consumers don’t see in the typical clothing they purchase?
The typical clothing that is purchased today is branded and marketing as a lifestyle product that promises to improve your life. However, this does so in a superficial way and so our relation to clothing is one of consumption, one of use and throw. Traditional artisanal clothing and textile traditions have deep roots in culture and symbolism. Items of clothing that are inspired by artisanal motifs usually linked to important events in our life can often be something that was produced especially by someone in the family lineage and has emotional and personal value, through this lens clothes are items to be cherished. Because while dressing to feel special is an essential human need, connecting with our dressing in away that we feel rooted in who we are and in our history and our families, perhaps all the more pertinent.

You have a few different ways you are achieving this. Can you tell us a bit about regenerative/indigenous cotton? Why is it so important that you work with this? How is it better for the environment than more commonly seen cottons?
We work with traditional rural farming communities where native, near extinct varieties of indigenous cotton are being revived to produce short staple fiber cotton that is then handspun, hand woven and natural dyed to create beautiful textiles in modern designs which are refreshing take on traditional artisans and wisdom. The reason regenerative and indigenous cotton is better for the environment is because genetically modified BT cotton is grown mindlessly with a focus on maximum yield and not only does it deplete the soil it is grown on, it is also an extremely water thirsty crop and ultimately harmful for entire ecosystems. However indigenous cotton is grown without needing artificial chemicals, fertilizers or irrigation and growing it in balance with other crops helps the soil to revive itself and also helps to sequester carbon in the process of growing cotton itself.

Block printing is a beautiful way to create a design. Can you tell us a little bit about the process and why you wanted to incorporate it into your work?
Artisanal block printing or the textile tradition of carving patterns into pieces of wood and then stamping them out of fabric using natural dyes is a way of life of many heritage communities across Western India. All you have to do is watch a photo or video of how blocking printing is done to fall in love with it. Imagine wearing an item of clothing where each individual motif has been hand stamped by a person. Where an artist’s expression of their joys and sadness are printed on to the cloth but then becomes a dear and cherish item of clothing that you wear for a long time to come. This is the true beauty of clothing as opposed to mass manufactured polyester with machine made printing that is simply a cheap knock off of traditional artisanal motifs. Block printing is not just aesthetically beautiful, but it is also a product of a harmonious way of life for communities that live in balance with their environment. Block printing is one of the more popular crafts in India, craft being the second largest employer in the country. When we support our artisanal textiles like block printing, we support an entire way of rural life that lives with minimum environmental footprint.

You are also passionate about using natural dyes. Can you tell us a little bit about how these are created?
Our desire to mass produce clothing means that there is a large demand for dyes to colour the clothing and a lot of the chemical dyes that are used to make clothing are carcinogenic in nature. Also the dyes are imbued on the cloth by washing them through water and it is common for many dye mills to discard toxic chemical rich water into the soil, rivers and local ecosystems. This is dangerous not only for the water, for the soil, for the animals but also for human being which ultimately consume the chemicals and toxic metals that find their way into the ecosystem because of the dye run . Using natural dyes is a reversal of this toxic cycle because you sourcing materials from nature which then also develop a character and change over time as if there were a living thing, is a great way to develop a connection with a cherish item of clothing, and does not contribute to the pollution of soil and water or the health of animals and human beings in the process of its making.

It has been a rough few years, how have you been staying positive during these times?
Yes, it’s been a rough few years, but hope is a choice. While I am contradicting myself here on most days I do not feel I have a choice in the work that I do. Because I have had the opportunity in privilege to work in various aspects of the fashion industry and have learnt so deeply about the impact fashion is having on the environment, I am unable to look away from my role and contribution to trying to make a change for the better. So it’s less about hope and more about doing everything I canto create positive change and to share the solutions that I have encountered so that others have ease of access to them and ultimately help support a movement that makes the fashion industry change for the better.

To learn more about Sonica Sarna, please follow the below links:
sonicasarna.com
Linkedin
Instagram: sonicasarna
Facebook: sonicasarnadesign

Sonica Sarna - Designing the Future of Fashion