If agricultural biodiversity is key to a sustainable future, we must also question the cultural aesthetics of the fashion industry. Currently, a Western aesthetic is exported globally – from the growing retail presences of fast fashion giants after decades of sourcing from the country, or the steady stream of secondhand clothes being imported from the Global North to the Global South, often destabilizing local textile and manufacturing industries in favor of cheap, fast fashion goods. Would a return to regional, ethnically centric clothing revive a set of artisan practices that are inherently tied to indigenous forms of production? In many textile rich nations that were ravaged by colonialism, there is a movement to revive indigenous plant varieties needed for indigenous forms of production that were destroyed as a result of colonial systems of tariffs and excise duties that discriminated against indigenous producers. In India, many communities are searching for organic seeds of short-staple cottons that had over thousands of years, adapted to local microclimates in South Asia, making them naturally resistant to local pests and insects, and thrive with rainwater as their water source. In Bangladesh, there has been a recent resurrection of the phuti karpas plant, which grew along the Meghna river – and was essential to produce Dhaka muslin which was the most valuable fabric on the planet 200 years ago.
— Beyond us Apparels Private Limited