This West Bengal designer ups her glitter game by upcycling sequins for her new collection
Designer Priyal Turakhia from West Bengal has won the Fashion Forward Fellowship 2021 for her Nirantar collection titled ‘Could Be’ which uses an upcycled alternative to single-use plastic
“Sequins are a by-product of petroleum and come from PVC. They are not sustainable, either in their manufacturing or disposal,” says designer Priyal Turakhia, going on to explain how sequins embellishing party wear can lie in landfills for hundreds of years without decomposing.
Priyal recently won the Fashion Forward Fellowship 2021, awarded by The ReFashion Hub and YWater, for her capsule collection, ‘Could Be’ by Nirantar. In it she incorporates sequins, created from upcycled water and cosmetic product bottles, in handwoven organic cotton from Kutch. A zero-dyeing approach addresses the issue of water pollution caused by the dyeing industry.
Read More | Upcycled clothing and accessories for your post-lockdown wardrobe
Impact of fast fashion
Siliguri-based Priyal, who grew up in Jamnagar, Gujarat, switched to design after graduating in Business Administration from Nirma University in Ahmedabad. “I realised that my heart is in design,” says the 24-year-old. Her first internship at a fashion store in Siliguri made her acutely aware of the disastrous environmental impact of fast fashion.
“When I saw weekly launches of new collections, I realised where this excess was leading. The majority of the garments were made of polyesters and synthetic fabrics, which release microfibres in the water with every wash,” says Priyal.
Priyal Turakhia with a model wearing a garment with upcycled sequins
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
She followed this internship with another under senior designer Purvi Doshi, who has been working in sustainable development since 1992. Here Priyal created swatches of fabric using organic cotton and single-use plastic. When the lockdown prevented her from going into production, she did a month-long Fellowship in March 2021. Online lessons included talks by curators Rushva Variphar and Riddika Jesrani, a virtual studio visit to Arundhati Kumar’s Beej Studio, and talks by the stakeholders of the sustainable fashion industry.
Read More | Hyderabad designer Ishita Singh joins the upcycling bandwagon
Between April and June Priyal translated her ideas to artisans and local tailors in Siliguri, creating four outfits. Faux sequins were shaped from plastic carry bags and PET bottle caps. These were hand cut in different shapes – circular, rectangular, triangular, square – and stitched as surface embellishments on undyed fabric, then onto garments. The brand takes a holistic look at sustainability — it replaces virgin plastic sequins with those made from single use bottles, reduces the water footprint by consciously using undyed or naturally dyed fabrics and focuses on clean disposal.
Buyback policy
“Sustainability is not just about how we produce but also how we dispose of our products. While thinking about the end of life of our products, we understand that our clothes will add to the waste piling up in landfills. We,therefore, have a unique buyback policy that allows customers to send us their old Nirantar clothes for a 10% discount on their next order. We are then able to separate the sequin from the clothes and recycle the outfits effectively since we make sure we are not physically blending plastic with any organic material,” explains Priyal.
She also has plans to make a casual line that uses faux sequins. “The whole point is to promote this as a substitute for sequins; they will always be a part of my brand.”
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