Say hello to green heart Mahima Gujral Wadhwa, the woman behind fashion label Sui, and find out why she’s stitching a meaningful connection between sustainability, fashion and wanderlust.
Affordable and sustainable fashion. It’s not often you hear those two words in the same sentence. So when an email talking about accessible slow fashion popped in our inbox, we simply had to investigate and meet the sender. Thoughtful, authentic and breezy, much like her designs, Mahima Gujral Wadhwa wears her (green) heart on her sleeve. Once a fast-fashion shopper, she talks about what sparked the revolution in her life, how she’s constantly learning, and reveals to us the true soul of Sui, her sustainable clothing brand with an extra special affordable edit under $100.
So you come from a family of women entrepreneurs…
Yes, my grandmother used to custom-make clothes and my mom took over when she was 18 and developed it into a brand. I was there always… after school, summer holidays. So even when I grew up, I was wooed by fashion and wanted to work in the luxury fashion industry. To be honest, I was a fast fashion buyer myself. I thought I’d come to Singapore to work for a big brand in marketing and all.
What changed your perspective?
When I was studying in Italy, we had a few classes on sustainability. A part of me connected with the concept. That’s when I came to know of Fashion Revolution and the Rana Plaza disaster where 1,134 people in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh perished.
When I was moving to Singapore and packing my things, I think that’s when I really saw what I owned. It was a real eye-opener. Leaving that part of me was a big turning point and when I finally moved here, I knew I wanted to work with a brand that makes a difference. It had to be meaningful. I met Laura Francois from the Fashion Revolution and began volunteering with them. My journey began with learning what sustainability was all about and what fashion was really doing to the planet. Everything from fabric production, wastage, chemical dyes, polyester fabrics and finally, human rights violations. Of course, I gave up shopping and fast fashion.
Tell us about Sui, your sustainable and conscious clothing label.
When I decided to start my own conscious fashion brand and began researching, I came across hemp fabric. It’s made from the cannabis plant. It takes a lot fewer resources to make hemp fabric versus cotton and even the water consumed in the process is 400 to 500 times less! It grows in the wild in India and the production process (to turn it into fabric) is a lot more wholesome than any other fabric I’ve seen. So I sourced it, hired a tailor, drew up a few pieces with my designer and got to work.
We decided to make 15 pieces that are comfortable and fit different kinds of body types. We do everything made to order. That way there’s no wastage. We have a few samples, but that’s about it. When I first launched, our fabrics used azo-free dyes that are the second-best alternative to chemical dyes. But now we know better and use herbal dyes.
Sui’s brand story is about travel. It’s about enjoying nature and travelling! I want to tell a unique story about our clothes. You’ll find little hand and machine embroidered patterns of leaves, bougainvillaea, hearts and other motifs, depending on the inspiration behind the collection. Even the name Sui translates to ‘a needle’ in Hindi. It also means a connection, which is perfect because we want to be a bridge between nature and fashion. After nine months of conceptualising and working on it from the ground up, we launched Sui in April 2018.
And you also have a more affordable collection under $100…
In a year, we work two big collections (summer and winter) along with two smaller ones in between. In 2019, we launched a special Basic-ally Edit and its 2.0 version went live this October. The whole idea behind this collection is to make sustainable fashion accessible and affordable. Everything is under $100. Right now, it’s not possible to create sustainable clothing for $10, but we try our best to at least hit the $40 mark. Sui uses herbal dyes and that adds to the cost, so to make this under $100 we skipped the colour for the Basic-ally Edit. Like everything we do, this collection is also made to order.
Plus, we try our best to educate our buyers. We believe in leaving our customers, even the ones that don’t buy, with something… some information and knowledge about sustainability.
Tell us about the enterprises and makers you work with.
We started off making clothes with hemp and organic cotton fabrics, but I didn’t want to stop there. Organic cotton is good but not the best. In India, the process of making organic cotton fabrics involves some level of coal usage. Now we also use khadi – it’s a handspun and handwoven natural fibre, so it’s truly clean. We work with a social enterprise called WomenWeave in Madhya Pradesh, India. Apart from hemp, organic cotton and khadi, we also use recycled fabric. It’s basically made with leftover yarn that’s normally thrown away. Our herbal dyer based in Gujarat, India, makes this fabric for us too.
We don’t ever intend on making in mass – everything will always be made to order. We have five tailors and we’re all about doing things in the slowest way possible. Everyone gets paid well. We only work with vendors that do right by the planet and their employees. I visit them regularly to meet them and make sure.
Sustainable fashion can be expensive. What would you say to people who want to buy conscious clothes but might not be able to afford it?
I often tell people, if you don’t want to stop buying fast fashion because you can’t afford sustainable fashion, it’s fine. Buy fast fashion but what only what you need. Make sure you wear it for the next four or five years. I think the least you could do is wear it 30 – 40 times and then donate or swap. There are so many great options in Singapore.
Sui, online. From 1 – 29 November 2019, you can find Sui along with several other sustainable brands at the second edition of The Lounge by Zerrin
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