From the house of Good Earth comes Good Earth FLOW — a contemporary take on silhouettes, designed for the Indian woman who is proud of her country’s sartorial traditions and likes to carry it with her when travelling around the world. Mindfully made within the values of sustainability that have become synonymous with the 25-year-old Good Earth, Good Earth FLOW is a pret label that carries the customer along for a journey in conscious fashion, regale in the craft traditions of India and yet retain the chic and contemporary spirit of 2021. Deepshikha Khanna, creative director, Good Earth FLOW, takes us through the creation of the label and its first collection.
Deepshikha Khanna
What was the thought behind the creation of FLOW? How does both Good Earth, the brand, and the Good Earth loyalist differentiate between FLOW and Sustain, the other apparel label?
One easy way of looking at it is that in Sustain, we have Rozana, which is your everyday basics made from the Good Earth lens of using handlooms, natural dyes and trying to keep it sustainable. I felt that we needed a slightly more contemporary category because there were a lot of women that didn’t necessarily fall under the traditional umbrella and wanted slightly more global clothes. For the lack of a better term, it is Indo-western clothing, which is made specifically for the Indian woman’s body. While I was at Sustain, often I was faced with a fabric that I felt could be interpreted really beautifully into a contemporary silhouette. So the idea was always there but the timing wasn’t perfect. A year-and-a-half ago after the Sindhu show (in 2019), I took a step back and thought about what it is that Good Earth needed to bring in that other customer that wasn’t currently shopping with us — and the answer was to create a completely different offering. The people who shop at Good Earth want similar things — they are already committed to the idea of sustainability. I think one has evolved to a point now to know that every consumption decision you make is affecting a lot of people and the environment. So that’s the other reason why we felt we needed to offer this wardrobe staple collection in the form of FLOW under one roof. For us, at Good Earth, we always love to apply the lens of sustainability. We are one of the few people who were the pioneers who did this and for us, it is something we would do irrespective of Covid.
Why are both conscious design and pricing important in 2021?
When you buy something, there’s always a perceived value for a piece of clothing and we work in both directions. We work in a way that we are looking at what a consumer wants and what that should be priced at and then we are thinking very carefully about a jacket made in Kala cotton not exceeding a certain price point or if a customer is comfortable enough paying this much for a jacket then what should we do at our end? This is everyday clothing and I am of a strong belief that we come from great aesthetic in this country, which has somehow been lost in translation over the years and it is my endeavour to really revive that once again.
I don’t think people have to pay so much money to look good and simplicity to me is really everything. Good Earth has always been very India-proud and one has to take their customers along with that. So offering a contemporary take on that is our responsibility and makes me feel proud. This woman we are catering to is not only discerning but she also has a style of her own and she is very invested in her own country and culture. So she would very proudly want something that comes out of her country that she can carry with her anywhere.
To answer your question of why this is important today — we are shopping lesser so we want pieces that are less trendy and more classic. We want less but want them to do more for us. The way we designed the FLOW collections is that we don’t want you to buy too many things — if you buy three things from this collection, you can make seven different looks with it based on what you bought and what you already have. And because we are buying lesser and more mindfully, I feel like this consumer could pay a little more. We can never compete with the prices of fast-fashion but when you are coming to Good Earth to buy something, you are already coming with that knowledge that you’ll be getting something classic and timeless, made for the Indian woman and her lifestyle. The clothes are all in limited pieces too.
What were the groundwork and studio work like for creating FLOW’s first collection?
I’ll be honest that Covid had nothing to do with it as our belief has always been comfort, sustainability and quality. While developing FLOW, the target was to create a brand that was addressing a need or a niche that we were not addressing at Good Earth. When we started to develop FLOW, it was fairly easy to start in terms of fabrics. Most of our fabrics come from the Kutch-Bhuj region and from Bengal. The linens and lightweight cottons come from West Bengal and we go to Bhuj for the Kala cotton because Khamir was the first to develop it. In deciding how to work with these people, it became important to collaborate versus to do design interventions as they are the experts already. So we wanted to use Kala cotton and those signature stripes that belong to them but what was missing was the strength and the hand-feel — where Good Earth comes in is that we worked with them in developing a blend with linen that they had never done before and gave them a colour palette. While I want to be sustainable, I also have to remember that I have to keep a certain price point. In some places I can’t do both handloom and natural dyes but wherever I can, we are doing it. When we can’t, we do the next best option. Choices like do I do natural dye or do a jacket that fits a certain way — we are always making these choices. For the first collection we worked with Malkha because we were really committed to working with natural dyes. With them, we said we’ll get your fabrics and your expertise in indigo but here, let us do a modern interpretation of your print. So we did a different variation of stripes with them, which is where our design intervention came in. So at the end of the day, we have to question why we are doing this. For us, it is very important that we continue to sustain this tradition of handloom in the country and whatever it takes for us to show our customers that handloom and sustainable fashion can be chic, stylish and last for a long time and hopefully, they will become loyalists too. It is less about FLOW as a brand and more about taking this customer with you and raising their idea of what all these traditions are.
What can we expect from FLOW in the future?
I feel that one reaches a point in life when you know what works for you and you want to buy a similar thing again but you’re happy to have it in a different fabric or print. So what we want to do is that the silhouettes will always be classic, the fabrics will keep changing. Our motivation with silhouettes is for an Indian woman’s body to always look good. Here, women have a chest and have hips so all our shirts will always cover your butts, for instance. With our pants, we will always give you an elastic at the back wherever we can but we will make sure that it still gives you a good fit and is slightly tapered.
We are looking out for Indian women because they are our customers. You will get something that complements your body, something that you can dress up or dress down and in colours that are always earthy and then it’s up to you how you wear it. So that’s how FLOW will grow and we hope what you buy from the first collection will have something that you can pair with from the second collection — there will be a similarity but we are hoping to address different needs.
Good Earth FLOW is now available on www.goodearth.in
Pictures: Courtesy of Good Earth
