Her Indigo Dream

At Amsterdam Denim Days, India leaves a mark with a Dutch label that sells sustainable denim fabric produced locally.

talk, delhi talk, denim, denim industry, Amsterdam Denim Days, Kingpins Show, fashiondenim map,Yoni van der Sluis

(Left) Designer Yoni van der Sluis; the denim making process

Most often India’s only connection to the denim industry is the availability of cheap labour that produces jeans for international labels. On April 16, at Amsterdam Denim Days, a trade show held in Amsterdam called Kingpins Show, India found itself on the denim map, courtesy 51-year-old Yoni van der Sluis.

In the huge hall that housed denim retailers, manufacturers and innovators, a tiny space was reserved for a label called Seven Senses. It was a busy booth, with a short video installation showing artisans working on a fabric in the background and a jacket on display, along with swatches of the same fabric. Each piece had a tag — Jaipur, Bihar, Kochi and Kolkata. Sluis, who started Seven Senses, debuted as a denim maker at this show, with a collection of hand spun, handwoven denim fabric created in India.

“I have a crazy India story, as I have lived there for a few years, when I was working with Westside in Mumbai. This was in the late-90s and I had been in the clothing business for a while, but in India I fully understood the supply chain. I interacted with farmers, and it was like my spiritual awakening,” said Sluis, slightly distracted by the number of people who turned up at her stall that day.

With Amit Anurag, founder of KDB Samiti NGO, a partner in India, Sluis has been working with clusters of weavers across the country. “Amit is from Bihar and he wanted to do something for his home state. He convinced people in villages to start spinning, and then I stepped in, and it has been a rewarding journey,” she added.

The fabric she sources from India not only stands apart because of the quality and feel of it, but also because it’s a lot more eco-friendly in nature. The two use natural indigo dyeing instead of chemicals, and every fabric is handspun and not taken to the mills. “In our supply chain, there is no abuse. Amit just helped one of the villages we support get a badminton court. I want to start a project that would help build toilets in the rural areas in India,” she said.

At the moment, Seven Senses only sells the fabric in The Netherlands but Sluis has plans to expand across Europe, and in India a few years later. Apart from this sustainable denim project, she also sources and creates banana paper and khadi cotton from India.

The writer was a guest of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands at the ‘Denim in the Netherland’ festival held in Amsterdam this month.

📣 For more lifestyle news, click here to join our WhatsApp Channel and also follow us on Instagram