All of our garments are made from handwoven cloth in natural fibres.
The cloth is exclusively from WomenWeave in Maheshwar, India.
All of our fabrics are hand woven. A handloom is a loom used to weave fabric without electricity thus saving on energy. Our cloth is woven on pit or frame looms which are located either in the Womanweave Gudi Mudi compound or in the weavers house dotted around the village. When you arrive in Maheshwar the first thing you can will hear is the clatter of the shuttles on the loom.
The fabric is dyed with azo free dyes with a proportion using natural dyes with the intention to move to 100% natural dyes within the next year.
Most of the yarn is spun by hand, a small percentage of finer yarns are mill spun. Fabrics woven from hand spun yarn are called “khadi” and fabrics made with mill spun yarn are called “handloom”.
Handloom fabrics are known to be soft, comfortable and durable, this is due to the human handling of the yarn in the weaving process, it results in the fabric being much less stressed and damaged. It gives the fabric a more breathable quality compared to mill manufactured cottons making it cool in the Summer but warm in Winter.
Read more about the Womenweave project at www.womenweave.org
The garments are currently made at a not for profit, social enterprise close to Maheshwar, called Kumbaya sps.
We minimise the use of fastenings where possible and when we do use them they are from a sustainable source.
The garments are cut in the least wasteful way possible so that we utilise all of the fabric. Occasionally in a style we will have a larger offcut which is then used in the production of the childrens’ or home collection.
packaging
The garments come packaged in compostable plastic bags and posted in recycled packaging. We have taken the decision not to add extra labels as these are usually thrown away once the garment is received.
We aim to be completely transparent in where we source our materials and labour, if you would like to know more or have any suggestions about how we can improve this please contact us at
admin@maia-london.com
