About us
At Adjective, we believe that handlooms are heirlooms, brimming with the energy of the hands they were woven with. They are indeed alive. As a brand we aim to embody the magnificence of the life of our products and their makers.
Our brand name ‘Adjective’ is an attempt to present you with choices that can aesthetically define your life from your personal style to your interior design possibilities with minimal impact on our planet but maximum impact on the lives of our women artisans.
We work with women from different parts of the world to identify traditional skills that they have been practicing for generations. We collaborate with them to form creative production units that are led by our women artisans. Together we design and create products that are universally utilitarian, generating continuous demand to build sustainable livelihoods using only natural and biodegradable materials.
Our journey in exploring women centered crafts has first led us to India, paying tribute to our Founder’s homeland.
The handloom industry in India is the second largest employer in the country, after agriculture. An estimated 200 million people depend on craft for their livelihoods. India produces an untapped goldmine of products that keep heritage crafts alive. These crafts are not just an intrinsic part of their cultural history but also their global competitive advantage. These crafts have the potential to change the lives of India’s women, youth and marginalised communities.
By creating a market for their produce we empower women, give them the chance to live better lives, contribute financially to their families, thereby garnering them the respect they deserve and relieve them from domestic abuse and the appalling societal problems they are born into. Also, giving them the opportunity to educate their children so they can carry on this legacy of handmade through modern techniques, business development knowledge and design innovation prowess.
Our Creative Production Units in India
Our work integrates seamlessly with the United Nations Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals.
We work with women from low income families creating sustainable livelihoods that in turn become a reliable source of income.
Our women artisans earn their own income and therefore become the primary decision makers on their health, can afford better healthcare and are generally more aware and make better choices especially when it comes to menstrual health.
The women artisans who work in our creative units are able to send their children, especially their daughters to better schools, already improving the opportunities their next generation will receive.
With more and more women realizing the ease with which they can use what they are good at, we are improving their lives. They now have a voice in their household and enjoy a place as a respected family member.
Our women artisans no longer have to seek out domestic work or daily labour both of which are unpredictable. A stable job and income along with the flexibility to work from home contributes to this goal.
We use only biodegradable material, organic cotton and natural dyes in all our products and packaging. All fabric waste from our production is repurposed into upcycled products like hair accessories, patchwork bags and jackets.
I hold an M.A. in Creative Writing from Kingston University, London and am a serial entrepreneur. I started Word Quotient, a content writing company and ran it successfully from 2007-2013 in Bangalore, India and London, UK. I chose to take a 4-year sabbatical to be a stay at home to my two boys. In 2017, I was driven to start Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Network (GWEN), through which I encouraged women to choose entrepreneurship and provided the support to sustain that decision through education and community.
My love for handmade began as a young child when I visited my grandmother over the long Indian summers and saw her sew dresses for my sister, cousin and me. Among all the keepsakes my grandmother made she also cross stitched all her grandchildren a pillowcase with our name on it (I still have mine to this day). As she grew older and her arthritic knee needed rest she stopped sewing and did more cross stitch. She always had a project at hand and one summer when she visited us in Bangalore, India, she inspired me to pick up the needle. That set the stage for my love for creating something with my hands but its not until I myself was at the brink of motherhood that I began teaching myself crochet. For the past 12 years, I have been equally addicted to crochet as my grandmother was to cross stitch.
My foray into working with artisans happened organically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Indian artisans found themselves in appalling conditions after the lockdown for COVID-19 in 2020. Master weavers and skilled workers were deprived of their livelihoods overnight, without any warning. Visionaries in the industry started a national movement to provide relief from starvation, reviving their sales channels and rejuvenation of the industry on the whole. I joined this volunteer-led movement to help with the revival and rejuvenation efforts and there began this beautiful journey building relationships with weavers and artisans directly, completely eliminating the middleman.
Today, we have a network of women artisans from Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar, Punjab and Rajasthan. All of them handloom weavers and artisans, creating each piece painstakingly over days, even months. Most of them second generation and third generation weavers from award winning artisan families, still creating heirlooms and keeping the legacy alive.
Adjective is an extension of the work I did at Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Network (GWEN). At Adjective, I primarily work with women artisans and artisan organizations that upskill and provide employment to economically marginalised women.