Siddharth Mohan Nair launches Swadeshi fashion brand, DesiTude

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Dec 4, 2017

Siddharth Mohan Nair has launched DesiTude, a casual wear Khadi brand with the slogan, “wear the spirit of 1947”.

According to Nair, Khadi is often associated with “politicians or old intellectual people” and his aim is to modernise the fabric and use it for contemporary, casual designs without having to sacrifice its sustainability. Although Khadi is the trademark of the brand, Nair maintains that customers are mainly drawn to his designs and said: “Some of them don’t even know what khadi is. It all comes down to the product.”

Products made using Khadi not only take time to make but are also expensive. For this reason, trousers are priced at around 4,000 rupees and shipping takes around ten to 15 days. Nair said his first customers have been mostly from the IT industry, people with a little extra cash and who are looking for something ethically made. The brand is carrying over its sustainable focus into all aspects of the business and, for recent advertising photos, they have been using migrant labourers as models to add diversity.

As DesiTude has just begun, when asked about his expansion plans for the brand, Nair said that, although he is not willing to sacrifice his ethics to grow the business, he would love “to grow DesiTude into something like a FabIndia maybe.” With Khadi continuing to rise in popularity, this could indeed be a reality. More and more designers are using the fabric and it has also been exempt from the GST (Goods and Services Tax) so it is currently both profitable and popular.