Introducing Luxe-Sustainable Living with Sirohi
SIROHI
Sustainability as a way of life has been picking up great attention & traction on a global scale owing to increasing environmental awareness & concerns. People are looking for ways to switch to responsible consumption styles but most shy away since there currently exists a large misconception about sustainable products – they’re just not that great. Allow us to tell you that that is exactly what it’s stated as, a misconception. To battle this growing misinformation, Sirohi positions itself as a luxe-sustainable brand by combining the two words you’ve never heard together before!
Sirohi is a sustainable luxury brand that advocates a slow and simple lifestyle based on values of Indian heritage and culture. Our home & lifestyle products are handwoven by skilled women artisans from marginalised communities in rural India by up-cycling plastic & textile waste materials. Each product from Sirohi has a story to tell with an aim to bring the beauty of the outdoors, indoors.
Where it all began
Sirohi was established in January, 2019 by Gauri Malik (Founder & Director). Gauri is an enthusiastic & innately entrepreneurial individual who is passionate for creating an impact in the communities and environments around her. The inspiration (& name!) for this organisation arose from one of her visits in 2012 to a little arcadian village in Haryana known as Sirohi. It was there that she first noticed rural women weaving charpais out of chocolate wrappers and saw great potential for showcasing their skills on a much larger scale.
A few years later, she launched Sirohi in her hometown, Muzaffarnagar, a small crime-laden district in Uttar Pradesh, India. She wanted to change the narrative of this region from one burdened by high crime rates to one known for its culture and creations. Sirohi while promoting sustainability & empowering women also aims to recapture the lost nostalgia of Indian heritage through its arts.
Our Work
At Sirohi, we like to pride ourselves as an artisan-led brand as each and every one of our products is intricately hand woven by women artisans.
Our journey began with just 1 artisan – Gauhar Fatma – only because the rest of them refused. In rural Indian communities, it is not customary for women to work outside the household. However, once they realised that this was a legitimate source of income, more women joined the force. Today, we stand strong with over 250 women artisans who are now financially independent and breaking social barriers like the boss women they are!
We leverage the existing skill sets of our women artisans to help them design products for the global conscious consumer. By collaborating with designers from the best institutions like Royal College of Art, London & National Institute of Fashion Technology, India we help them develop modern design sensibilities.
Our product collections house a wide range of home & lifestyle items. Our chairs, stools, benches & signature charpais are multipurpose & can be used indoors or outdoors. We also provide sustainable storage & organisation options like boxes, trunks, trays, tables & more.
We also recently launched a unique collection of home decor products suited for your work from home spaces like screen dividers, lighting, laptop tables & planters!
What Makes Our Products Sustainable?
To promote sustainable living, Sirohi products are handcrafted with either natural or up-cycled waste materials. We use ropes made from clean, unused and hygienic waste from packaging units and fabric waste from textile units. This essentially means that we use multi layer (HDPE and LDPE) plastic and cloth waste materials created during the manufacturing process that has not yet passed through the consumer, but would have otherwise been dumped and discarded; adding to the global plastic waste. Instead, we upcycle these leftover plastic and textile waste materials into coirs or ropes to weave products using traditional Indian styles.
To ensure transparency, we provide a carefully calculated set of metrics during production to show you the sustainability of your purchase. This mainly includes the amount of waste that was used to make that product & the amount of carbon emissions that were reduced by up-cycling this waste!
Moving Forward
As a relatively young brand, Sirohi has grown tremendously over the past 2 years. We have always relied on and believed in the power of partnerships for growth. In the past, we have collaborated with multiple prestigious organisations like Uniqlo, Innisfree, Lakme Fashion Week, Facebook India, Nest & more. We were also graced by several awards last year that celebrated our work like the UN Women Generation Equality Award, India’s Best Design Project & India Design ID Award.
We plan to move forward with a similar collaborative spirit to empower more women across the country while imbibing values of sustainability among everyone who comes across our work!