Eco-Friendly Fashion by MINC

An eco-friendly fashion store for women and young girls with the brand name ‘MINC’ has been launched by MISHAN Design Point Pvt. Limited, a Bangalore based company pioneered by Mini Shibu, a post graduate in Apparel Design from NID, Ahmedabad, and her husband Kochery C Shibu. The concept has been to promote eco-friendly fashion, working with handspun and handwoven fabrics, organic cotton and vegetable dyed fabrics and supporting a social chain of tribal cotton farmers, weavers and dyers community while improving the environment.

The couple spent about six months researching various prospects of sourcing organic material and vegetable dyes. Then, they narrowed down to a rehabilitation centre for weavers near Thiruvannamalai, which was set up to promote craftsmen and their trade, and to Gandhigram Dundigal, where organic cotton is handspun and vegetable dyed.

Says Mini Shibu, “MINC is an effort towards eco-friendly fashion for women and kids that aims to develop value-added garments which are eco-conscious in all aspects. The brand embraces the use of eco-friendly fabrics and environment-friendly dyes. The collection is made from natural fabrics – cotton, linen, silk or wool that is handspun or handwoven. Dyes used for colouring are vegetable or azo-free.” The collection also includes a line that is exclusively designed from organic cotton fabrics that are dyed using mordant free vegetable dyes, and that are handspun and handwoven to specifications from the design studio.

Says Kochery C Shibu: “The vision of the company is to make eco-friendly handspun handwoven, vegetable dyed and organic fabrics and garments. Starting with Bangalore at this stage, we plan to expand to all South Indian cities by 2010; to all Metros by 2013 and to all major towns by 2017.” MINC opened its first store in Bangalore in December 2007 and a second one in May 2008.

“The focus of the brand in Fit, Function, Fashion and Integration, which we call the F3I of MINC garments,” Kochery C Shibu outlines. “At the company’s design studio, we lay a lot of stress on meeting these standards,” he adds. The brand addresses self assured women and the confident tweens market with a range of easy to put together separates in classic styles and treatments.

MINC has a production capacity of 800 garments a month, and they are 30-40% costlier than garments manufactured from non-organic non-dyed fabric.