people and process
Behind each of our garments is a chain of decisions; Which fabric is most durable? Which dyes have the lowest environmental impact? Is this truly organic?
Sometimes these questions are uncomfortable, and the answers aren't always what we'd like to hear. But that's part of what makes Saves Nine different. We don't shy away from the more challenging aspects of garment production; we want to understand them, question them and make better choices.
Block-Printing
For our printed fabics we work with small block-printing studios in Karnataka and Rajasthan.
Traditional block-printing is skilled, physical work and demands a great deal of experience. It’s also a process that can be harmful if shortcuts are taken, particularly when chemical dyes are allowed to leach into local waterways. For that reason, we only work with printers who use environmentally responsible dyes and processes.
Hand weaving
Much of the fabric used in our sleepwear collection is woven by hand in different handloom clusters across India.
Supporting handloom communities in India provides meaningful livelihoods in places where industrial production is steadily pushing traditional crafts to the margins. Handwoven fabrics carry subtle variations, softness and character that machines simply can’t replicate. They are important records of place, history, and identity.
cotton
Cotton is one of the hardest materials to trace with any certainty. Once harvested, fibres are often mixed, traded and re-sold multiple times before they are made into fabric.
In most supply chains, there is simply no reliable way to track cotton back to a specific farm, let alone verify the farming practices used. This problem is compounded by the reality that organic certification systems are prone to corruption or misuse. The gap between claim and reality is often far wider than consumers are led to believe.
For this reason, we are careful about the language we use. In practice, our handwoven fabrics are made from cotton grown without chemicals, but unless we can fully guarantee where that cotton came from and how it was farmed, we won’t label it as organic. We’d rather under-claim than over-promise. Transparency is more important to us than ticking a marketing box.
Oshadi
Oshadi is a regenerative cotton initiative in South India that partners with local farmers to convert their conventional cotton farms to regenerative and organic ones.
Oshadi cotton fabric is traceable back to their 250 acres of regenerative farmland, offering transparency at a stage of the supply chain that is usually and willfully hidden.
The price of their cotton is dictated by the farmers themselves, not the local market rates. Regular cotton market rates fail to compensate organic farmers for the risks they take (including highly variable yields), the ecosystems they work to rebuild, and the multi-year effort required to regenerate degraded farmland.
Oshadi's regenerative cotton uses 50% less water than conventional cotton. And their spinners and mills are powered by 100% renewable energy.
We use Oshadi's regenerative cotton to make our block-printed sleepwear.
What Is Regenerative Farming?
Regenerative farming is an approach to agriculture that looks beyond short-term yields and focuses instead on the long-term health of the land.
Healthy soil retains more water, stores more carbon and produces stronger, more resilient crops. Practices such as crop rotation, cover cropping, reduced tillage and composting help to rebuild fertility and restore balance to the ecosystem.
These systems take time to establish and rarely offer the speed or volume of industrial agriculture. The result, however, is more important: healthier soil, greater biodiversity and less chemicals in surrounding waterways and communities.
