My Studio

I recently moved base to Goa - welcome to my open-air design studio! This is where all the magic happens - everything that goes into making that organic cotton t-shirt you just bought so perfect, happens here! And Goa is a huge part of the inspiration for our collections. So, here goes - let's walk through the design process I follow! 

The Mood Board

The Sketches

Designing Details

Once the mood board and product planning is done, it's time to move into the detail designing of the collections. It's days of sketching and designing before I can short list a few designs that can go into the sampling stage with the factory. This is where all the customer feedback is of great help! How long should the T-shirt be? How short should the sleeves be? Is the neckline too deep? Big buttons or small buttons? Contrast thread or matching thread? Single stitching or double stitching? Half inch or One inch? Yep, it's that detailed!

It’s an evolving process from the day we started & that is how we are able to make a organic cotton T-shirt that fits well & lasts forever! Once I am through this stage, I get to sample the designs with the factory and see the styles in flesh & blood.

The Samples

Yay, the samples are here! I am always eagerly waiting for the fit samples to arrive. It's exciting to see the designs that were just lines and numbers a few weeks ago, into actual garments! This is the most crucial part of the design cycle. This is where I decide the fit & feel of the garment.

There are lots of questions to be asked & answered here:

- should I use 120gsm or 140 gsm? (GSM = grams per square metre)

- should I do that fabric wash? (I do! – that’s what makes your cotton T-shirt extra soft)

- Ooh, I think I am going to make the shoulder smaller (psst...that's what gives you the slimming effect, ladies!)

- And I want to make the hem curve a little, it makes the t-shirt hug your body better!

The Colours

Along with the garment sampling starts the testing of new colours. This is loads of fun! I get to choose a bunch of colours pulled out from the mood board and send them to the factory to test them on fabrics. After a few rounds of testing and lab dips, I shortlist my final set of colours!

The Line Sheet

Now I have my final colours & the right fit for my designs! A line sheet is created and I get to plan how many colours to offer in a particular design. This one is always a challenge! It’s a never ending battle...why can’t I have all the styles in all the colours!

The Finishing Touches

It's time for the finishing touches! Here, I work with the branding team to come up with some of the key elements that make the organic cotton t-shirt a physicoolsports t-shirt. From the witty care labels & the fun pizza box, to the shiny new size label, the team works together in creating the perfect brand and packaging that makes up the personality of our t-shirts.

Over to You!

I love that I get to play around with different concepts & silhouettes to create fun ways to wear our humble organic cotton T-shirt before it's back to the mood board for the next season...lather, rinse, repeat.

Rajlakshmi Cotton Mills is one of India’s leading sustainable textile companies that not only produces quality products but observes the highest social, economic and environmental standards. It is organic and fair trade certified. No child labour, no forced labour, no discrimination.

At the mill, employees receive a living wage that is approximately 20-50% above the legal minimum wage, with regular increments and an annual bonus that is not performance-related.  Workers receive paid holiday leave, medical insurance, sick pay, overtime at double the normal wage and a retirement pension fund plan, as well as subsidised meals and free transport.  Employees are free to join trade unions. All children of the mill workers receive free schooling.  These benefits and more have resulted in a high level of worker satisfaction and a low employee turnover of approximately 2% per year.

So what happens when the cotton from Chetna that is destined to become a batch of physicoolsports t-shirts reaches Kolkata?  First, it is spun into yarn, which then gets knitted into the supersoft fabric lengths that physicoolsports fans rave about.  The fabric is checked for quality and then dyed to our technicolour specifications using eco-friendly, water-based dyes that are Global Organic Textiles Standard (GOTS) approved.  After being washed and checked once again for colour consistency, the fabric is stacked and then cut into the pattern pieces of our t-shirt shapes that have been tweaked to perfection.

The cut pieces are then hand-printed, again using eco-friendly inks, bringing to life the artwork of our talented designer community – a group of incredibly skilled individuals who all believe in the power of good through design.

After printing, the fabric pieces are sewn together and voilà!  The t-shirt is born.  It is carefully finished, checked, then securely packed up.  The super sexy tees make their way to physicoolsports HQ where they are waiting eagerly for you to give them a loving home.  For every purchase, the farmers get more, the factory workers get more and you support brands like us who are trying to make a difference - all in return for buying an awesome t-shirt. 

Not a bad deal :)

So let's get straight to it and hear from our designer, Shweta, about Dunes - our latest collection. 

What's the origin of the theme of Dunes?

The concept for the Dunes print came about while I was at a yoga retreat last year. It was an art meditation technique that I practiced while I was there, which stayed with me much after the retreat. The technique was very simple, drawing lines across the page in *one breath*.

It took me a couple of days to fill up the entire page, and the result was beautiful! My breathing pattern were translated into rhythmic waves that imitated sand dunes.

That's an amazing story for the design! Did you have an inspiration for this particular pattern and technique?

I liked the idea of sand dunes (sand dunes translated well into the concept of space & time which in turn related to the concept of meditation) So I started researching patterns created in sand dunes and came across the work of American artist, Tracie Cheng. Her work was not only inspiring, but it also helped me integrate my drawings with my clothes.

The prints look great! Tell us more about the new silhouettes and the fabrics too - what's new this time?

Everything! This collection we have all new styles for women. No repeats!

The silhouettes are mostly one-size-fits-all, anti-fit shapes to allow for easy, casual wearing as well as accommodate more body shapes.

And we have a lot more variety in fabrics too - Single Jersey, Slub, Voile, Yarn dyed checks, Swiss Dot! 

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(Featured above are the Nyiri, Aliciella and the Mojave dresses from the collection, all featuring brand new fabrics - still 100% organic & fairtrade cotton, of course.). 

That's a whole lot of new! How did you choose the colour palette for this collection?

Since the silhouettes are mostly anti-fit, I went with clean, neutral colours that were easy to wear. Keep it simple, sistah!

(Read more about the overall design philosophy of making classic, timeless pieces here)

How was the production process in Kolkata this time? Did you have to change/evolve any of the designs during sampling?

The production process was particularly challenging this time for a couple of reasons. The print & the print placement were both unconventional and required a lot of iterations with the printing team at Rajlakshmi (our factory).

It took a lot of hours at the printing table to get the placements right and sustainable for production. Even after all that, we had to drop the printed shirt for men (sorry, guys!) as it was too tricky going into production.

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(ps: If you're new around here, physicoolsports is a completely transparent brand and we share all our supply chain info - see it here.)

Thanks for sharing, Shweta!

Well, what are you waiting for - go take a look at the Dunes!

For an hour and a half we nudge through city traffic, marvel at classic yellow taxis crossing the iconic Howrah Bridge, and make our way into the industrial suburbs where eventually, the Rajlakshmi Cotton Mills compound emerges as a peculiar kind of oasis. Oh, it's still busy and chaotic here – very much so. But in a sea of nearby chimneys puffing pollutants into the sky, Rajlakshmi is noticeably different. It's the fair trade, organic powerhouse where physicoolsports garments come to life – and there's even real-life Palmae in keeping with our current collection on site!

Every visit to the factory is a super valuable opportunity to work directly with garment technicians on our samples and designs, and we always come with a looooong to-do list that somehow gets even longer before it gets shorter again. So what have we been up to this time?

#TODO

• Checking up on current orders for physicoolsports and white label work for other brands around the world. We arrange custom printing of our bunny-soft t-shirts for organisations and NGOs including brand new designs for Reality Gives in Mumbai. We've just sent a shipment by sea to the good folks at Toddy in the Maldives (so cool!) and packed up tees for the Happy Startup School's summer camp in the UK (more on that soon – we're heading there next week).

• It's full steam ahead for the physicoolsports fall collection and we're buzzing around like busy worker bees (hint, hint) to get that finalised and in your hands before you know it. With just a tad of last-minute scrambling to finalise fabrics and get samples ready for our photoshoot, we're confident that you'll love the pieces as much as we do! The fall collection is (almost literally) the bee's knees!

• We're also investing a lot of time prepping for future collections and expanding our range even further. Kids wear for sure! Accessories, you bet! New prints and fabrics? Sooner than you think.

• Lunching! There's no way we can't mention it. The piping hot rotis and tasty subzis served up at the factory are a true highlight in long days otherwise fuelled by coffee and lemon tea. Y-U-M.

A lot to squeeze into a week! But it's so inspiring to be around all the fabrics and the processes, both old (expert screen printing) and new (precision cutting with LASERS!).

#REDUSE-REUSE-RECYCLE

We carefully choose our super-soft cottons from the excess stock left from other brands' orders. It's more sustainable, saves water and money at both the farming and processing ends of the production chain, and ensures nothing goes to waste. It also allows us to stay on trend and have so many more fabric choices than if we had to order huge volumes of our own made-to-measure fabrics. All that to say, the fabric stores are always a treasure trove for us. There are now three dedicated warehouses for fabrics, packed floor to ceiling throughout - all organic, all fairtrade. A designer's dream!

#GROWTH

As our week at Rajlakshmi draws to a (somewhat hectic) close, we can't help but marvel at the growth we've seen here since our relationship with the producers first began. The factory itself has expanded hugely, onto numerous different sites. The number of people employed here - under safe, fair trade conditions - has naturally shot up too. Cotton consumption has grown significantly, with Rajlakshmi cementing its place as a majority buyer of Chetna Organic’s fair trade, organic cotton grown across Maharashtra, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh (from 234 farmer members in 2004 to around 35,852 in 2014!)

#MOVEMENT

We've loved seeing more product diversity emerge at the factory too, from home furnishings to activewear and generally an increase in younger, more urban design brands. With our goal to create a consumer movement for fair trade in India, we're particularly excited to see more Indian brands starting to produce their garments here (Check out Stretchery for some great organic yoga/activewear).

#LIGHTHOUSE

While exports have been strong for a long time, we were the first domestic fairtrade brand to work with Rajlakshmi; five years on there are four more Indian brands with lines in production, including some we were able to connect directly with our supply chain. This is one of our core tenets at physicoolsports: "to be a lighthouse" to other brands wanting to join the ethical fashion movement by being transparent and helpful. We don't compete, we collaborate. Here's the recipe - let's make a bigger pie together, shall we?

Things are looking good for the scaling up of the movement. Ethical fashion is growing in India and it’s a privilege to spend these crazy weeks right on the floor of the fashion revolution.

#BYEBYE

As they say in Kolkata, "aabar dekha hobe" - see you soon!

You will also know that physicoolsports are proud to be completely fair trade and organic. This isn’t just lip service – we are hugely passionate about these issues.  To kick this new blog of ours into full swing, we’d like to share with you a bit more background on the innovative organisations responsible for firstly growing the lovely cotton, and then whipping it up into the high-quality t-shirts we are so pleased to put our name to. 

Today: how is our cotton grown?

Say hello to Chetna Organic.  Chetna is a farmer-owned producer company, which markets and trades fair trade and organic certified cotton on behalf of its farmer members.  Its mission is to “improve the livelihood options of smallholder farmers from rain-fed regions by supporting them to adopt sustainable agriculture and empowering them as informed stakeholders in ethical supply chains”.  Throughout Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Western Odisha, more than 15000 small-scale and marginal tribal farmers are supported in adopting safer, more environmentally friendly and socially sustainable systems.

Did you know that the average rate at which farmers commit suicide in India is every 30 minutes?  Did you know that 55% of all synthetic pesticides in India are used in cotton farming?  Toxic chemicals that are banned in the West are still sold in India and used in cotton farming.  The health hazards of these pesticides not only directly impact farm workers, but they are expensive – and alongside dependence on genetically engineered seeds and chemical fertilisers, farmers face spiralling debts and increased healthcare costs.  A shocking number of farmers have been driven to the desperate act of suicide.  Co-operatives like Chetna offer a radically different alternative, with a focus on using local resources, constructing viable financing models and giving farmers a shared platform from which to voice their concerns.  

In their own words:

Healthier and more secure than before, farmers in Chetna Organic project a promising picture of their future in complete harmony with nature. A growth from 250 farmers in 2004 to over 15000 farmers by 2012 speaks for itself on how farmers have chosen to stand on a common pedestal of Environment… Ethics… Equilibrium!

Cotton that will eventually become a physicoolsports t-shirt is lovingly harvested from the fields, transported to the mill in reusable sacks, cleaned, processed, kept at the ideal humidity level and eventually formed into big compressed bails for transporting all around India.

Let’s check out life on the Chetna farms, and in the surrounding communities.

 All images from the brilliant Chetna Organic Facebook page.

We’re looking forward to giving physicoolsports fans regular updates from Chetna throughout the seasons, and we’ll be setting off for another visit to one of their cotton farms soon too.  Road trip!!

Next up… the cotton bails are off to our very special factory.  Stay tuned!