Fashion from Indian artisans to Brazil

We are passionate about India. So passionate that we opened a brand inspired by the country.” This is the phrase with which Letícia Sales defines her and her partner, Peeyush Rastogi’s relationship with the country and with Happee, a brand with socio-environmental impact inspired by India, travel and lots of positivity!

Letícia has a degree in Fashion from Faculdade Santa Marcelina, in São Paulo and a postgraduate degree in international business. She ended up in India 7 years ago, through an AIESEC exchange program. “I worked in some Brazilian companies before coming to India, until I decided to fulfill my dream of living abroad. My intention was not to come to India, but most of the AIESEC vacancies in fashion were here, so it ended up happening naturally.” She also did a fashion exchange in Italy.

Peeyush came into her life during the exchange. He was the vice-president at the AIESEC office in Jaipur, and was responsible for the department that brings exchange students from abroad to work in local companies. “We met and, as time went by, we saw that we both had the desire to create a business with impact, that was not just a company that aims for profit, that follows the traditional operating pattern”.

Letícia says that in her experience working there, she realized that fashion is a very unfair and unequal industry across the world. Before India, she had already worked in Brazil and Italy, and realized that there is a global pattern in the labor exploitation industry, ranging from fast fashion brands to Italian luxury brands. “How can I continue to ‘wear the shirt’ in companies like these?”, she thought.

She already had experience with fashion and Peeyush had experience dealing with local clothing companies, so they decided to create a business with an impact on the industry.

“We work to provide a better life for artisans and people in vulnerable situations, giving them the care and respect they deserve, and a chance to give their families a better life.”

They started taking some products to Brazil, to see what people liked most, and that’s how they started creating the first products. They launched Happee in July 2015 and, over time, they have revised the social causes they support and the products they sell. Today, they work with women’s clothing (and some men’s shirts), shoes, scarves and accessories such as toiletry bags and wallets. “Our products have prints and embroidery made by hand, using ancestral Indian techniques.”

Happee and social entrepreneurship as a form of transformation

“For us, Happee is a way to solve some problems in the fashion industry through our work. In social entrepreneurship, we believe that doing good is a priority, as is profit. Doing good makes us as happy as a month with good sales, or good results we have in any department. Social impact is part of everything we do. It is not a specific action carried out by a specific department. It’s part of the company just like developing a product, it’s a constant thought about how we can impact people’s lives, improve what we already do. How can we make a product more artisanal to provide income to more artisans, how can we use part of the profit to contribute to actions in the community, how can we make a label on handmade paper to employ more families”, says Letícia.

Letícia says that each community and artisan is very diverse. She says artisans in India often live in rural areas, as do most of the Indian population. “There are unofficial data that count 200 million artisans in the country, making artisanal work the pillar of the rural economy after agriculture. They rarely have a computer, access to raw materials is very restricted, and they are certainly not on the internet. So how do you find and work with them? Furthermore, each region of India is very rich in a specific type of craftsmanship. It’s like the lacemakers in the Northeast of Brazil. You don’t go to Rio Grande do Sul to order a production of lace towels, for example.”

To know what to work with, they choose the types of work they would like to do, find out which villages they are made in and go to the location. In one case, the village was more than 20 hours away by train, almost on the border with Pakistan.

In the manufacturing process, the products are designed by them and they do not launch more than two or three collections per year, to avoid wasting raw materials and unnecessary consumption. The Happee team designs or chooses the prints, and produces samples of the clothes in the chosen prints. After approval of the modeling and prototypes, production begins.

“Our clothes are made by a small workshop in Jaipur, with 10 employees, and the accessories are made by artisans from different parts of India. The owner of the sewing workshop is a super honest person and opened the workshop to provide a better life for his family, after spending 20 years earning little in the industry. After production is completed, a portion of our inventory remains in India to serve our local and international customers. We send the rest to Brazil, where we stock and distribute to stores and consumers who purchase through our Brazilian website. Sometimes, artisans offer us products or prints that they created, and we end up incorporating them into the collections.”

Design process: 0 waste

“When you work with sustainability in mind, this process is natural. At Happee, Peeyush came up with the idea, after taking a course on sustainable fashion and studying more about the subject. Sustainability is not just about using less polluting fabrics and raw materials. It also requires you to take into account the useful life of your product, the waste generated in production and the people involved. After all, what’s the point of using organic cotton if the item was sewn using child labor?”

Letícia says that clothes generate a lot of waste, as there is a huge waste of fabric and that for this, there are modeling techniques that reduce this waste in a simple way and, what is eventually left over, they use to make handmade paper or save it to be reused in other products. This paper is used in Happee TAGs and comes with basil seeds. This way, TAGs can be planted instead of thrown away.

Social responsibility and concern for Indian women: ecological sanitary pads

“Here in India, 80% of women do not have access to sanitary pads during their menstrual period. There are more than 300 million women of childbearing age in India. Can you imagine a population the size of Brazil having problems every month because of menstruation? We have a partnership with a Jaipur-based NGO called PraveenLata Sansthan. They developed a pad made from antibacterial, washable and reusable fabric. They did a lot of research for this development, they have several prototypes and reports on durability and antibacterial properties. For every product sold at Happee, we donate a menstrual pad made by the NGO to a woman in need.”

In donations, the pads are placed in kits with 4 units each, and provide menstrual hygiene to women for 5 years. They started this partnership less than a year ago when they redesigned the brand. The sanitary pads are donated to villages in rural areas of India and, after some time, representatives from the NGO return there and check the results. “Women continue, in fact, to use pads even a year and a half after donation. It is very gratifying to be part of such a beautiful project carried out by such committed and responsible people”, says a proud Letícia.

The coronavirus and the impact on Happee and social actions

“I have been following the news closely since January, and I already imagined that the coronavirus would spread around the world, as no one was taking it seriously. I was cautious with the new collection, and we ended up postponing the start of the new production, which would start in March. Then the lockdown started and the whole country stopped. In the first few days, not even supermarket employees were able to get to work, so the workshop that works with us was naturally affected. As time went on, they were able to start producing masks for hospitals.”

In India, they have been in lockdown for 6 weeks, now extended for another two. They certainly won’t leave the house before June, when the lockdown is 2 and a half months old. There, the general confinement has been very strict.

Letícia says that until recently, there was nothing open besides markets and pharmacies. Things started to change and now, in cities where there are no new cases, there has started to be greater and gradual easing. In Jaipur alone, where she lives, there are almost 500 police blocks on the streets.

“No one leaves the house, the population obeys and even the opposition agrees with the confinement. As it is a very populous country, with a large poor population and precarious hygiene conditions, there is a consensus that it is necessary for everyone to collaborate so that the contagion decreases. When there is a case in an apartment, for example, the government blocks not just the apartment, but the entire building.”

Letícia said that she did not imagine that the government would deal with the problem so well, and in such an aware and organized way. “The testing capacity has been expanded, and now reaches 70 thousand people per day in the country. The relaxation takes into account a division of India’s 733 districts into colors. Green districts, where there have been no cases for more than 21 days, have greater freedom of movement. I feel safe and protected here,” she says.

When they found out that the workshop they work in was making fabric masks, they decided to help. They raised funds to make more than 1000 masks which, instead of selling, were donated to needy communities in Jaipur, in addition to 100 kits with masks + alcohol gel for police officers who patrol the streets. “We are still receiving donations and will soon launch a pre-sale of some products made by the workshop, to be sent after the lockdown.”

With R$20, you can help donate 10 masks to people who need them. To donate, just send a DM on Happee’s Instagram or Facebook inbox.

Another action they promoted during the pandemic was the donation of basic food baskets to workshop workers. In total, more than 220 basic food baskets were donated to families of between 4 and 6 people. The baskets were enough to feed up to 1300 people for 15 days during the quarantine. “This was our first action, to help the NGO feed families who had lost income during the lockdown. After a few weeks, we donated basic food baskets to the 10 workshop employees and started the mask campaign.”

Happee’s actions during the pandemic:

• Donation of basic food baskets to feed 220+ families who lost income for 15 days in India, more than 1300 people in total;
• Donation of basic food baskets to the 10 seamstresses who work in the workshop; Production of 1000 masks with the workshop that makes Happee clothes, providing income to seamstresses during the quarantine.

The masks are being donated to communities in need here in India, including:

• 100 masks for police officers patrolling the streets of Jaipur, who also received bottles of alcohol gel;
• 100 masks to Rays, an NGO that cares for HIV-positive children.

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