All sectors / Fashion & Accessories / Upasana
Upasana is a conscious fashion studio based in Auroville, India, seamlessly blending creativity, Indian culture, and social responsibility. Operating with a philosophy where business is approached as yoga, the enterprise designs beautiful clothing and accessories. They prioritize local organic cotton, silk handloom fabrics, natural dyes, and restorative Ayurvedic herbs, ensuring all products are environmentally responsible and upcycled. Upasana views design as creative problem-solving, launching impactful initiatives like Tsunamika dolls for post-tsunami trauma relief, and the Kapas and Paruthi projects to support organic farmers in high-suicide regions. Their Small Steps project actively combats plastic pollution, while Varanasi Weavers revives declining textile traditions. By connecting every stage of the supply chain from rural farmers and spinners to weavers and modern designers, Upasana cultivates a holistic, sustainable fashion ecosystem that deeply honors life, inner growth, and nature through mindful, ethical, highly transparent, and incredibly conscious global retail consumerism practices every single day now.
Uma Prajapati
CEO
Operating since 1997
Eco-system
Industries
Cities and Towns
Villages
Sub-sectors
Ethical Fashion
Sustainable Materials
Handicraft & Artisan Products
Social Enterprise
Type Of Product
Fabric & Material
Ethical Practice
An Auroville conscious fashion studio creating sustainable apparel and empowering artisans through social design projects.
Method and Technique of Upasana are:
Handloom Silk and Organic Cotton Procurement: The enterprise utilizes a highly targeted, localized agricultural sourcing method, intentionally partnering with rural Indian farming cooperatives to procure non-genetically modified organic cotton and authentic handloom silk, bypassing environmentally destructive, massive-scale industrial textile suppliers.
Ayurvedic Herbal and Natural Botanical Dyeing: Upasana employs a restorative, chemical-free coloring technique where premium natural fabrics are carefully infused and dyed using traditional Ayurvedic herbs and locally foraged plant-based pigments, ensuring the resulting garments are completely non-toxic and deeply therapeutic for the wearer.
Participatory Post-Disaster Artisan Manufacturing: They utilize a highly empathetic, community-based fabrication method through the Tsunamika project, gathering industrial textile waste and training traumatized coastal women to manually craft these scraps into symbolic dolls, effectively blending trauma healing with zero-waste artisanal production.
Decentralized Traditional Weaving Network Collaboration: The organization employs a culturally preservative supply chain technique, specifically intervening in regions with declining traditional crafts by financing and organizing decentralized networks of Varanasi silk weavers, providing them with contemporary design templates that appeal to the modern conscious consumer market.
Sustainable Circular Pattern Engineering: Upasana utilizes a slow-fashion, zero-waste design method, meticulously drafting their garment patterns to maximize fabric utility while simultaneously intercepting their own offcuts and excess materials to be creatively repurposed into functional lifestyle accessories and the beloved Tsunamika dolls.
Holistic Value Chain Integration and Tracing: They employ an interconnected operational management technique, meticulously tracking the journey of every garment from the initial cotton seed planted by marginalized farmers to the final stitch applied by Auroville tailors, ensuring absolute fair trade compliance and total supply chain transparency.
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