Sustainability as an Indian Default
Sustainability in luxury is often framed as a recent corporate mandate. In India it is closer to an inherited habit. Hand-spun Bengal muslin, plant-based pigments, and zero-waste cutting traditions all predate the vocabulary now used to describe them. The country holds over 3,000 officially recognised intangible cultural crafts, many of them low-impact by construction rather than by policy.
As the global fashion industry works to reconcile growth with environmental limits, that inheritance is worth examining seriously rather than romanticising.
The Craft Inheritance
Long before industrialisation, the subcontinent produced Bengal muslin, known as woven air, alongside floral attars from Kannauj and earth-derived dyes. Traditional tailoring and embroidery embed zero-waste techniques by necessity: hand-cutting and artisanal assembly use the material that is there, because material was expensive and labour was skilled.
These traditions represent an at-risk intangible heritage. For brands, the value lies in provenance and the human narrative behind each stitch, and in treating artisans as co-creators rather than anonymous subcontractors.
National Targets and Industrial Reality
India has introduced the PM Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel (PM MITRA) scheme, planning seven industrial mega-parks, with an aim to triple the value of the fashion sector to $350 billion by 2030.
This sits alongside national targets of a 45% cut in emissions and 50% of power from clean sources by 2030, and pressure via the UN Fashion Charter to remove coal from supply chains by the end of the decade.
Indian factories are adopting biomass boilers fuelled by agricultural waste, supported by roughly 140 million tonnes of annual surplus biomass. Large exporters including Shahi Exports and Arvind are investing in these systems alongside rooftop solar. Fashion For Good has introduced its Future Forward Factory concept as a blueprint for near net-zero facilities.
Where VVID Actually Sits
It would be easy to attach ourselves to the paragraph above. We are not going to.
VVID is a small operation producing runs of 40 pairs. We have not audited our supply chain, we do not hold environmental certification, and we do not have data on the energy sourcing of the tannery that supplies our leather. Until we do, any claim we made about our environmental footprint would be decoration rather than fact.
What we can state accurately:
- Our sneakers are hand-assembled in India, in runs of 40 pairs, 8 in each size from UK 6 to UK 10.
- The Croco Edition uses croco-embossed cowhide at 1.1 to 1.3 mm, sourced from a tannery in Agra, with soft-finish cowhide panels and suede accents.
- The croco pattern is an emboss. It is not exotic crocodile skin, and no protected species are used in any VVID product.
- Small-batch production means we hold less unsold inventory than a high-volume model would. That is a consequence of our scale, not an environmental programme.
Most leather worldwide, including footwear leather, is chrome-tanned. We have not verified the tanning process used for our hides, and so we do not claim one.
What Conscious Buyers Should Actually Ask
Indian consumers, particularly Gen Z buyers, increasingly link status to provenance rather than logos. That instinct is only useful if the questions are specific. If a brand tells you it is sustainable, ask:
- Which certification, issued by whom, and when does it expire?
- What tanning process, and who verified it?
- Where is the tannery, and has it been audited?
- What percentage of energy is renewable, and is that measured or estimated?
A brand that cannot answer should say so, as we have here. "Eco-friendly" with nothing behind it is a marketing word, and the industry is full of it.
Transparency and Certification Gaps
Current certification standards often fail to account for the socio-economic landscape of Indian manufacturing. When Western-centric compliance models impose rigid requirements on wage structures or facility space, they can neglect the realities of decentralised production, pressuring smaller manufacturers into surface-level compliance.
Digital product passports and blockchain-backed supply chains are emerging as ways to document a product's lifecycle with evidence rather than assertion. These are genuine developments, though adoption at small scale remains limited.
Global Houses Look to India
The international luxury establishment increasingly treats India as a creative partner rather than a manufacturing base. The 2011 Hermès collection shown in Mumbai fused French leather craftsmanship with Indian weaving and zardozi needlework. Chanel, Dior, and Balenciaga now incorporate techniques such as chikankari and kantha into major collections, and Dior's Fall 2023 show at the Gateway of India reflected a multi-year partnership with the Chanakya atelier.
Domestic designers including Sabyasachi and Anita Dongre did much of the groundwork, redefining modern Indian luxury as a synthesis of tradition and contemporary vision. The 2021 GI certification for Kutch Bandhani marked a further step in protecting heritage craft.
The Honest Position
India has a real claim to a more sustainable model of luxury, grounded in craft traditions that were low-impact before that was a selling point.
Whether any individual brand lives up to that is a separate question, and one that should be answered with documentation rather than adjectives. We would rather tell you what we know, name what we do not, and let you judge.