Upasana, a clothing company located in Auroville, Tamil Nadu in southern India, is a place where creativity, fashion, design, Indian culture, business, social responsibility and spiritual progress get woven seamlessly together.
Clothing has power, the power to change lives. The lives of farmers, spinners, weavers, printers, tailors, designers and many more who have invisibly woven their souls into what we wear. Upasana honours them all, consciously, at every stage of crafting our products. Shifting fashion to touch the soul instead of just the body, we believe life is interconnected. Beauty is beyond vanity. The process of creation is as precious to us as giving you a beautiful product. We honour flaws in weaving as part of honouring life, streak of shade in dye as part of natural shades. We silently celebrate the fading of natural dyes as we gracefully watch ourselves change through time. We design for mortality while honouring life, nature and inner growth.
Our mission is to create conscious sustainable fashion where we are taking care of our environmental cost and not passing it on to the future. For us, design is creative, problem-solving. Any problem, be it post-tsunami trauma, farmer suicides, garbage littering, weavers losing their job, Upasana looks at social issues as a space to exercise for change. Out of these real problems were born the following projects:
» Kapas – organic cotton project with families of Madurai
» Varanasi Weavers – a project with the weaving communities of Varanasi
» Tsunamika – a tsunami related project providing livelihood to fisherwomen
» Paruthi – India’s local organic brand to support India’s organic farming community
» Small Steps – compact bags as an alternative to plastic bags
