Jean Mapping: Shani Himanshu

Shani Himanshu
11.11/Eleven Eleven

Specialises in:
Khadi denims for men and women made from organic cottons and natural dyes.

“When we were consulting for Diesel in 2009, I worked very closely with its founder, Renzo Rosso, who actually built the whole concept of vintage and washed-down jeans in the 1980s. He said it’s what the future is about and, of course, people mocked him but he believed in that idea. Denim has a life of its own — when you buy new jeans, they are already washed down; they age on you and become a kind of second skin. In the ’80s, retailers started replicating that kind of (aged) wash on new jeans with a machine. Then the whole industry started coming in with stone washes, sand blasting and tinting.

For me, denim was a blank canvas so when we were consulting for various brands (for 11.11/eleven eleven’s parent company CellDSGN) I would design a lot of those washes for various labs. When denim is made as a fabric it is always a dark indigo and hence, I call it a blank canvas. You scrape off the indigo and you wash it down. As a brand we were already working a lot with khadi as a base, and eventually the development of khadi jeans was initiated with Arvind Mills. We work with kala cotton and use 100 per cent natural dyeing processes. For 100 per cent kala cotton handmade jeans, things start with the plucking of cotton and it takes almost four months to finish. It goes through hundreds of different hands — people who pluck, spin the yarn, weave the fabric and dye…. We were the catalysts for bringing back all these different (weaving and dyeing) traditions and techniques of India and we made khadi jeans with a certain count and rate. The main idea was to work with the best craftsmen and produce something which is considered a luxury purchase. We realised that it’s a slow process — khadi is hand-spun and handwoven — and we didn’t want to fast-forward it with machine-stitching, and instead wanted to celebrate the idea of doing things by hand.

For every item, we have a unique product code which can be tracked back to the beginning — where the cotton came from, who the spinners and weavers were, who dyed the fabric and who stitched it. Particularly in 100 per cent handmade garments, the person who stitched the garment signs off on it — their name is written on the inner lining. Every button is made from 100 per cent brass — we collect old coins and turn them into removable buttons. All the stitching details are completely done by hand — the signature, the sizes and all the embroidery. Since there are so many stories and processes that go into creating the garments, we also design a “route case” in which they are packed. The case tells you about the journey of the cotton; where it came from to the people who participated in making that particular pair of jeans. At present, we are working on a back-end system where we are uploading all the data and where eventually, you will be able to enter this unique product number online and view the history.

In the pre-Independence era, India placed a very different value on khadi. We had indigenous cotton which was hand-spun and woven, and that’s how the whole value and supply chain systems were established, making cotton production a gold mine at that time. It has now switched to GMO cotton and machine-spinning, which breaks the whole system. So, for us, it was about adopting the same value system as the past. However, creating quality products by hand has its own cost because it takes time. If we don’t appreciate and pay for the time given by the artisans, they will never earn in accordance of the value they add to the product. So, the cost tends to become high and khadi jeans will become a luxury. The knowledge and understanding of the craft, however, is not there. So, we need to first understand what it takes to work on something like this.”

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