Shradha Kochhar’s Imli Dana wears regeneration on its sleeves. Using textile waste from garment manufacturing factories in Delhi, the brand meticulously brings together these pieces through patchwork techniques. Kochhar infuses personal nostalgia into her creations by incorporating crocheting and knitting together with her grandmother, a skill that was also passed down to her. Based in New York and Delhi, Imli Dana serves as a conduit for Kochhar to reconnect with her Indian roots and preserve cherished childhood memories. Celebrating the labor-intensive artistry of old patchwork and hand knitting, the brand strives to embody a nostalgic homage to simpler times—being true to their name.
Kochhar shares insights into Imli Dana’s unique identity, its regenerative ethos, and its aspirations for the future.
IDEA BEHIND THE NAME
I’m extremely fascinated by the parallels and interconnection between Textiles and Food — how it’s grown, nurtured and crafted to nourish and to inspire. Never made in isolation like little seeds grown into perpetual beauty — from seed to stitch, the name Imli Dana came from a need to address this interconnection.
INTERGENERATIONAL HEALING
Like food, sharing meals or cooking together as well as spinning fibre to yarn to weaving and knitting and cutting and sewing cloth has become a ritual at Imli Dana, that fosters a sense of community and dialogue. The act of making textiles together has created beautiful opportunities for communication, understanding and healing intergenerational wounds.
SUSTAINABILITY IN TODAY’S FASHION LANDSCAPE
I genuinely think sustainability is caring for people. The systems that we operate in today, people are not happy. The farmers are not living a respectful life, the makers are not living a respectful life, the designers are probably not living a respectful life. Sustainability cannot be in isolation from the community. The only way to make today is by being intentional, intentional of what, how and why a maker makes. Expanding my personal research to practice — Imli Dana works with regenerative cotton that is capable of growing without artificial irrigation and significantly less resources as compared to most cotton grown in the mainstream. The goal is to make exclusively from resources that are either waste or regenerative in nature. Exploring new ways of shifting the agency of textile making from nature using to nature restoring is central to all decisions made at Imli Dana both on design as well as communication side of things.
REGENERATIVE CLOTHES
Creating up cycled and regenerative clothing is a dance of challenges and creativity — one we enjoy immensely. Sourcing materials requires finding hidden treasures amidst mountains of what is deemed trash, while maintaining quality standards demands adaptability and innovation. Working towards building anything sustainable requires setting up of systems from scratch. We make our own cloth, which is laborious and takes more steps than how things are currently made to scale but it is the only way we offer transparency. Scaling up presents hurdles as we are always working with parts of the process that we can not control for example — quantity and shape of a given textile available as well as the weight of the textile we find.
This is an exclusive excerpt from our June EZ. To read the entire article and more such pieces, follow the link here.
Words Paridhi Badgotri
Photography Tarishi Gupta
Hair and Make Up Randy
Talent Amira and Harshvardhan Shah
Date 01.07.2024