Nest Certified SukkhaCitta: A Regenerative Fashion Pioneer

Photo Credit: SukkhaCitta

SukkhaCitta, a Nest Artisan Accelerator alumni, is the first and only apparel brand to carry the Nest Seal. Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, this slow fashion brand is on a mission to empower women while reversing climate change by changing how clothes are grown, made, and worn.

Founded as a social enterprise aimed at providing viable work opportunities for stay-at-home mothers through heritage crafts, SukkhaCitta has since expanded its scope to infuse sustainable practices across their supply chain, prioritizing regenerative farming and circularity initiatives.

67% of fashion’s carbon emissions come from raw materials and how they’re processed. That’s why, in 2020, SukkhaCitta started growing their own cotton and dyes regeneratively. Leveraging indigenous wisdom, they created new opportunities for smallholder farmers and restored the health of their soils – turning them into natural carbon sinks.

Traceability is key in their mission to go from doing less harm to creating positive impact through everything they made. No detail is too small: Their textiles are crafted from 100% natural materials, every color dyed with plants, even their buttons are sourced from mother-of-pearl waste.

The SukkhaCitta aesthetic is timeless and deliberate, and they even offer repair and re-dye services to their customers, extending the life of their own garments. This revolutionary approach to sustainable fashion, from fiber, to fabric, to afterlife, sets SukkhaCitta apart from in an industry of seemingly endless consumption.

Looking ahead to the future, SukkhaCitta is committed to growing their climate initiatives for years to come. They are now working to measure the carbon emissions of the total company operations and setting Science Based Targets in order to properly quantify their carbon emissions. Their goal is to reduce these emissions by 90% by 2030 and offset what that cannot reduce by purchasing internationally accredited carbon offsets.

In addition to this ambitious goal of becoming a climate positive clothing brand, SukkhaCitta also seeks to grow their use of regenerative cotton to be utilized across 100% of their product line by 2025, with the goal of regenerating 1,000 hectares of land by 2030 through the indigenous ‘Tumpang Sari’ practices.

As a Nest Artisan Accelerator business, SukkhaCitta received training, support, and resources to help grow their business, as well as the opportunity to be assessed and certified by Nest’s compliance team. We loved working with and learning from SukkhaCitta through this program and during our on the ground visit, we had the pleasure of observing and verifying their sustainable production practices firsthand.