Ajai heads to London with his own brand of sustainable fashion
Ajai Singh:Making sustainable fashion the new normal
When Ajai Vir Singh flew back to Sri Lanka after giving a talk on responsible fashion at the Rajasthan Heritage Week he got home to a bag stamped “Royal Mail”. The curious parcel will take the fashion visionary and President of Colombo Fashion Week to Buckingham Palace this week for a Commonwealth Fashion Exchange Reception hosted by the Duchess of Cambridge and the Countess of Wessex.
The first of its kind, the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange will be jointly co-hosted by the Commonwealth Fashion Council and takes place during London Fashion Week. The showcase will include selections of collaborative pieces by emerging and established artists and designers with the aim of promoting artisanal skills and sustainability in fashion.
Ajai’s involvement with the Commonwealth Fashion Council began in 2015, when he was invited to be a founding member. “They had researched me beforehand,” he says, explaining how he came to be chosen as one of six Asian representatives out of the 52 countries governed by the Council across Africa, Pacific, Caribbean, Americas, Asia and Europe. Operating in line with the Commonwealth Charter, the Council consists of a 20-member team, comprising Fashion Week and Fashion Council organizers and presidents from across the Commonwealth working to creating a network between governments and industries to foster an educational and social dialogue for a responsible, sustainable, global fashion market.
For Ajai, the appointment was an open door of opportunity. “For me, it was a chance to do something for Sri Lanka internationally through this.” While Colombo Fashion Week has emerged as an industry in itself, “this takes Sri Lanka to a more international platform for the whole industry,” he says, describing himself as a representative for the Lankan fashion sector at the Commonwealth level.
Ajai has long been a champion of sustainable fashion in Sri Lankan and is happy that it is getting more attention at a global level today. Ajai’s mission is towards sustainable fashion propelled campaigns like “garments without guilt” (a term he coined). It resulted in promoting the Sri Lankan apparel industry, with the majority of local factories subscribing to the high environment and labour standards set by an industrial charter and receiving the certification of ‘Garments without Guilt’.
Sustainable fashion for him can be added to the equation of one’s basic necessities- food, shelter and clothing. If you’re eating good food, he explains, you will need good clothes as well. His vision for sustainable fashion he divulges is to break down the ‘charitable’ label that is tied to it and make it “the new normal”. “That’s what the responsible fashion movement is about,” creating apparel that is scalable, appealing to masses and reducing consumption.
“Sri Lanka can take a lead in this,” he says, echoing his initial attitude towards sustainable fashion. Although the apparel industry did get involved in sustainable design and production “I saw more potential.”
With his 15 years of experience behind him- “I did a framework on what is relevant for the fashion industry globally” and what “we could offer as South Asia to the market globally,” he said.
It was in the midst of these plans, his work with Sri Lanka’s First Fashion Hackathon and the talk in December that he got the invitation for the prestigious event in February and news of his re appointment to the council.
With the buzz of burgeoning ideas, he connected the director of the Council to the bubbling potential in the local fashion arena. In London, Ajai will present a bag made from ethical alternative material he has been working on together with a local designer. “Being one of six Asian representatives” is more than a personal accomplishment for the fashion visionary, who sees it more as an opportunity for the local industry he works tirelessly for.