India’s Looms of Ladakh featured on Times Square Billboard

By Sreya Sarkar

(Published in Dainik Bhaskar, Delhi)

Last month, ten women social entrepreneurs were featured on billboards at Times Square and other venues around New York City as part of New York Fashion Week. The first bi-annual Conscious Fashion Campaign which is an initiative of the Fashion Impact Fund in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Partnerships and the PVBLIC Foundation, spotlights women entrepreneurs advancing fashion industry change on digital billboards.

Over 100 applications from 25 countries were sent in by women social entrepreneurs in fashion, out of which only ten were chosen based on their contributions to the sustainable development of the fashion ecosystem if their solutions or sustainable business practices supported the advancement of at least one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal.

India’s Abhilasha Bahuguna, founder and director of Looms of Ladakh found a place in the top ten.

Like the other campaign honorees, Bahuguna proved to the Fashion Impact Fund that, “Solutions, systems, and strategies are available to transition the fashion industry to an equitable, inclusive and regenerative sector," said Kerry Bannigan, executive director of the Fashion Impact Fund.

Looms of Ladakh is a Women’s Cooperative with a vision to become an exclusive global brand of ecologically and culturally sustainable fibers. A producer-owned luxury label rooted in the skilled eye and business acumen of female artisans, it aims at bringing economic benefits to the herders and the artisans of Ladakh who work with Pashmina and Yak wool.

Pashmina and Yak wool are inseparable parts of the history and culture of Ladakh. The raw pashmina fiber comes mainly from the Chagthang region of Eastern Ladakh, the western extension of the Tibetan plateau which provides a perfect high altitude ecosystem for grazing. Ladakh pashmina is supplied as raw, dehaired wool in bulk to the cashmere industry that Kashmiri artisans and merchants have publicized in the entire world with their exquisite shawls and other apparel. The yak wool is equally fine but used for utilitarian purposes mainly by the local yak rearing communities in India.

In the global market, the demand for Pashmina, Cashmere, and Yak wool products is emerging with other luxury brands like Qiviut and Angora. They are luxury brands because they are delicate, rare, and labor-intensive.

In 2012, on a hot sunny afternoon, Ms. Bahuguna had envisaged the need of democratizing the luxury Pashmina industry while observing Kashmiri traders selling their work in a Delhi neighborhood. A few years later in 2015, Mr. G. Prasanna Ramaswamy, the deputy commissioner of Leh then, came across a self-help group of women in the remote village of Chumur and thought how a cooperative could help the craftsmen in Ladakh. Fate brought them together. During their courtship, they discussed the idea further. Soon after they got married and together they co-founded their shared dream---Looms of Ladakh.

Bahuguna, a trained economist with the experience of working in an international think tank under her belt was quick to recognize the opportunity and need to train and empower the rural women with better skills to hike their income and improve their quality of life through a cooperative endeavor.

Over a phone call, she told me how the cooperative came into being. Initially, the idea was skill development of the artisans but as her bonding with the local women deepened she realized the need for a long-term plan. She said, "The Cooperative was formally registered in 2017 and the focus since then has been on branding, positioning, and organizing.”

It has not been an easy ride. Looms had initially faced opposition from local elites and was viewed as a passing fad. "How democratically decisions can be taken in a producer-owned company structure, was a concept that was alien to the locals." But she and the women owners didn't give up.

“More than four years of incubating a fashion business with semi-skilled herder-artisans of a raw material economy has been satisfying but challenging. To build an institution with all the rural members as owners, guide them in best management practices along with striving for international market level manufacturing standards needs a team of believers, advisers, supporters, and cheerleaders,” she stated. That’s why getting visibility matters.

When asked how being featured on huge NYC digital billboards felt like she answered in a laugh-laced upbeat tone, “The Conscious Fashion Campaign did boost the team’s and my morale to push for the dream further.”

Receiving international recognition she thinks, has given Looms of Ladakh more visibility and helped magnify the value it stands for which is not only promoting Pashmina but also Yak wool, that according to her is the “next Cashmere.” It has brought in more funding and an opportunity to develop a relationship with the Fashion Impact Fund. “I am hopeful that we will be able to build on that relationship and get some of them as advisors and future Board members.”