Recycling hand-me-downs is catching on with British Indians, thanks to the efforts of Sital Punja, an energetic and enthusiastic young social entrepreneur

By Cate Langmuir

Stuffing your suitcase full of old saris might seem like an odd thing to do before taking off for India. But for British Indians travelling back to the mother country, such behaviour is very much the norm. Gathered from mums and aunties at home, saris are distributed by the visiting relative to India’s rural poor as a form of charity. But is it what these people really want, or need?

London-based film executive, Sital Punja, found herself asking this very question on her first trip to India, as she arrived in Gujarat laden down with second-hand saris. Doing her somewhat reluctant lady bountiful bit, Sital encountered such extremes of poverty that the whole idea of giving a struggling woman someone’s old clothes struck her as ridiculous.

“I really felt I was being patronising,” recalls Sital. “They have a different lifestyle from us. When we buy saris in Britain it’s for special occasions and they’re different fashions from what they wear in India, or certainly what the poor are wearing. They are not going to put on a silk sari for everyday. What would be much more handy would be a load of blankets for the cold weather or a bag of food for the month.”

“We do this all the time, go into developing countries thinking we know what is good for them. But we’re not putting ourselves into their shoes. We’re just relieving our guilty consciences.”

Far better, it occurred to Sital, to give the old saris a new lease of life by making them into products to sell, thereby turning clothes into cash to help some of the many charities working in India.

She sat on it for a few years, searching for a way to make it work. She had no idea how to start a business, let alone one that worked to benefit charities. Eventually, and once she’d saved enough to ensure she wouldn’t be making herself homeless, Sital took a sabbatical from her job to get a fundraising project off the ground.

“Everyone said I was crazy leaving a good job for what they thought was nonsense,” laughs Sital. “They just didn’t understand my passion. I couldn’t let it go.”

“I raided my mum’s wardrobe, got aunts and uncles to go round collecting saris. A group of friends were keen to help – we made them into handbags, cushion covers, held raffles and parties, we’d sell tickets and have a show. Our aim was to raise money for Sense International, enough to build a school for deaf blind children in India. And we did!”

Sital never did go back to her old job and soon her social enterprise, Sari (UK) Ltd, was born, as well as a new campaigning stance.

“The fashion industry is so wasteful, so exploitative,” she insists, “and as another little string inside me was pulled, I got sucked into the world of fashion ethics. Making garments out of old saris is our way of exposing the industry, by showing how easily textiles can be recycled.” Not to mention demonstrating how cost-effective it can be to produce clothes in the UK.

Of course, as Sital is quick to point out, recycling saris is nothing new in the Indian community. Her twist is to create stylish one-off dresses, jackets and handbags, which sell in high-end boutiques at £150-£250 a pop. Bags like the Lulu use corsetry boning and feathers and along with most of the garments, have to be hand sewn because the delicate materials would rip in a sewing machine.

The fabrics are often completely unique, too, as Sital reveals: “We get saris that women brought over in the 1960s, from Uganda or India or wherever, which have been hidden at the back of the wardrobe. They’re really retro, with great geometric patterns, or amazing embroidery. The jazzy textiles that cropped up in Western fashion were played out in sari fashion, too. I’m also really fond of the rich embroidered silks and chiffons, they make beautiful ballgowns. A designer can have a field day.”

Word spread quickly after the launch and before too long Cherie Blair was spotted carrying Sital’s eye-catching Lulu bag, and the team were dressing comedian Nina Wadia, who hosted the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.

Sital herself won the Asian Business “Community” Award this year. She’s a founder member of the Ethical Fashion Forum, which now boasts a huge profile, but was started by Sital and two friends around a kitchen table. Sital also sits on the board of Social Enterprise London, and has set up the Save a Sari Campaign to keep the recycling wheels in motion.

“Eventually I’d like to mix saris with organic textiles,” she says, “as they become more readily available, and other kinds of recycled or waste materials. Right now though we have to keep things manageable, stick to what we know we can sell, keep our costs low and our fundraising activities high.”

Perhaps Sari UK’s most rewarding work has been with the Corum Family Centre, a training programme for Bangladeshi women – experienced seamstresses who suffer all sorts of barriers to employment, including language. The Corum ladies were taught to follow the evening bag pattern so that they could make them of a high enough quality to be able to sell them.

“It’s also a social project for them,” explains Sital. “A lot of them don’t get out of the house much, many feel trapped and suffer depression. This project gets them talking to people, enables them to be socially active.

“We like to employ people in the UK where possible. It’s very important to keep skills in this country. We’re losing trade to China, India and now to Eastern Europe, when people are out of work in this country. And actually, it’s more cost-effective for us to produce stuff here than it is for us to go abroad. It is coming back, because craftsmanship is being valued more, and there’s more demand for individuality these days. It’s starting to emerge again, like a bubble on the suface. Give it another ten years… I’m ever the optimist!”

Most recently, Sital has been working on The British Sari Story, an exhibition currently showing at London’s Brent Museum.

She loves to wear her label and has taken one of her baby pink Lulu bags to the Cannes Film Festival, where it attracted more attention than the starlets. But when it came to her own wedding - her big, fat Gujarati wedding with 900 guests - Sital went very traditional.

“I did wear a recycled sari outfit at my party,” she says, continuing, almost apologetically, “but on my wedding day I wore traditional red and white. I’m expecting my first baby and I’d like to think that if it’s a girl, I’d hand my wedding dress on to her. It is so beautiful, though, I couldn’t recycle it for anything in the world.”

Sital needn’t feel guilty on that score. With ten per cent of Sari’s profits still going to children’s charities in India, she is more than doing her bit.

For information visit www.saricouture.com