Fashion: Eco in your pocket

  Each denim product requires about 200 litres of water before it reaches the shelf and each washing unit uses about 2lakh litres every day.

Yes, fashion designer and textile developer Deepika Govind likes to shock you with data that you won’t find written on the garment tag when you buy your favourite pair of jeans.

Most often, you wouldn’t care about the manufacturing details behind each pair of those jeans that you think makes you look ‘hot’. But one has got to draw the line at some point. Environment consciousness cannot be picked up in a day or by reading a few lines every June 5 (World Environment Day); it has to be bred into every single human being.

Stressed, de-stressed, torn, ripped and faded — the one fabric that has had the world twisted around its weave is the familiar denim. A trend that cannot be called one simply because it never goes out of fashion, denim is as staunch in its position as ever. And while brands across the world fall over each other to stay ahead of the business by inventing and designing all possible shapes, sizes, styles and colours — there are a few people who address the popularity of denim on a more conscientious level.

Deepika Govind is one such person.
Tough ambition, perhaps even impossible but that doesn’t stop her from trying. Consequently...

Adding to her kitty of environment friendly garments and fabrics, fashion designer and textile developer Deepika Govind has now launched her range of eco-friendly denims. Labelled Denim Green, she’s got a series of off-the-shelf creations as well as the fabric in itself for made-to-order garments for men and women.

“It’s a project that I have been working on for the past four and a half years. But it took me some time to bring it onto the shelf. I think the first need to start developing denim was that a lot of clients would see some of my designs and ask if I’d make that in denim for them. And I’ve seen the forecast; it’s denim and denim and more denim for the next four or five years,” she says.

But then there was this question of how to make denim environment-friendly. “We use specially-woven organic cotton and dye it with indigo and it’s unbleached. The thing with vegetable dye is that it doesn’t really penetrate to the core of the fibre and has to be dyed multiple times to get the right kind of blue. It takes time but is worth it. Plus, we do a plain and simple wash, only once, to make it shelf-ready,” adds Deepika.

The designer has also created a range of affordable denims where the indigo used in dyeing is not 100% natural but is approved by the necessary environment bodies.

“Of course you won’t get all the fancy embellishments you see in the stores; we’ve done what we thought was rightfully possible. The scraping with a stone to make it distressed, whiskering, grinding, it is all there,” she adds. In addition to jeans, dresses and tops, Deepika has also made a select selection of bags with the same fabric.

“We’ve also employed a kind of treatment called the Ozone treatment, which washes the fabric with ozone rays, without using any water. The other one is by the use of laser technology. Here, you put the denim in a unit and it does all the work for you — from distressing to fading — with the help of laser technology,” says Deepika.

So, there’s no red denims for you at her store?
“The fault is within us; you can’t blame the customer. When they see candy coloured jeans, they go berserk because it looks really fashionable. But the effect on the environment is rarely taken into consideration. People don’t ever bother to turn their fabric around and check out the fabric composition tag to see how much of artificial fabric has gone into their garment. It’s a matter of awareness,” says the designer, not without admitting that the people’s negligence towards the environment troubles her all the time.

But with designers going ‘eco’ and ‘ethical’ all the time, isn’t it about time people became more aware of being environment friendly? “I have to say this here — there is a big difference between eco-fashion and ethical fashion. Eco-fashion uses natural fabrics and dyeing processes. Ethical fashion doesn’t discourage the use of artificial fabric because they say it lasts longer so you don’t have to discard clothes as religiously. But I don’t think that’s the right approach. Artificial fabrics are bad for the environment and they’re bad for you, too! “I went to a trade show in Paris recently, and I hardly saw any cotton or silks. I went berserk! Talking about being eco-friendly with fashion, most natural fibres are a little expensive because they’re not mass manufactured,” says the designer.

It’s often hard to put down everything Deepika says because her conversation ranges from the plight of textile weavers in Orissa and Gujarat to the sheer disinterest in the government bodies to preserve traditional craftsmanship and weaves. But yes, we could do with more people like her in the industry. But even that she says is a tough task. “It can’t be just me or another designer or an NGO. This has to be a movement. On one hand, we have to work towards resurrecting Indian weaves that will soon die out because no one is interested in them and on the other, promote fabrics that are eco-friendly and don’t damage the earth,” she asserts.

It is the least, we believe, designers can do to fulfil their responsibility towards the earth.

Denim Green is priced at Rs4,500 up wards and is available at the designer’s store in Craig Layout, MG Road and the International Departure Terminal of Bangalore International Airport.