Safia Minney has never been one to mince words.
For the ethical fashion OG—she founded pioneering brand People Tree in Tokyo three decades ago—the industry’s social and environmental commitments fall far short of what’s needed for humanity to have a fighting chance at survival.
The current churn, Minney argued, is unsustainable in every sense. To stop straining planetary boundaries and return to a “safe operating space,” she said, production must shrink by a staggering 75 to 95 percent—or risk fashion’s share of global carbon emissions ballooning to 26 percent by 2050, when runaway temperatures driving extreme heat for workers, mass biodiversity loss and widespread food insecurity will be impossible to rein in.
“When we think about the scale of what’s coming our way, we really need to act now,” she told Sourcing Journal. “We need to transition the fashion industry to fit in the sweet spot between social foundation and ecological ceiling, which means that every person on this earth would have access to food, health, education, quality housing, income and democracy. We need to switch to lower-impact materials and find new ways of producing.”
Or perhaps not so new. Despite a few diversions along the way, Minney keeps returning to craft as a solution to fashion’s many predicaments. For one thing, it naturally slows down production because it’s so labor-intensive. For another, it’s low-carbon by nature. And at a time when consumers’ trust in luxury systems is eroding amid sweatshop scandals and quality issues, craft can offer a new kind of luxury that “brings about a just transition that will redistribute the wealth of fashion,” she said.
People Tree trod that path, becoming one of the first clothing brands to achieve a Global Organic Textile Standard and the first to receive the World Fair Trade Organization label.
But when Minney, ahead of launching a new organic and fair-trade clothing label, returned in 2024 to villages in India and Bangladesh where artisans who weave, tailor, and embroider live and work, she was struck by how little had changed in the decade since she was last there.
“It was really shocking that things have just got worse,” she said. “We still have modern-day slavery in supply chains, and our whole economic system is set up to exacerbate the divide between rich and poor and to concentrate wealth.”
Indilisi, as Minney dubbed the new brand, began with a mission. In 2023, People Tree’s U.K. business collapsed into administration, owing a reported 8.5 million pounds ($11.5 million) to suppliers, employees and customers. Though Minney had stepped down as CEO in 2015 following her separation from her then-husband James—who continued as the brand’s CFO before becoming its group CEO and chair—many producers reached out to her for help with market access after orders evaporated. She didn’t think twice.
“It has always been that passion of handweaving and hand embroidery and seeing them create livelihoods in rural areas for women that motivated me to get into the space of sustainability,” Minney said. “I did become an ecologist in the process. There’s nothing that makes me happier than bouncing around in organic cotton fields, not only because the soil is wonderful, but also because I really see the craft of organic, small-scale cotton farming and the craft of artisanal weaving and those different production techniques as the way to the just transition.”
Named for the imaginary fairy world her daughter created while growing up in Japan, Indilisi marks a return to form for Minney. After leaving People Tree, she wrote four books—including “Slave to Fashion“ and “Regenerative Fashion”—pursued a doctorate in post-growth fashion and led carbon literacy training at the “bottom-up movement” Fashion Declares, a role she continues today.
Indilisi, expanding from an initial 10 styles, embodies everything Minney preaches—perhaps more so than People Tree did. Here, heritage crafts such as handweaving and hand embroidery take center stage in the form of organic jacquards, Madras checks, ikats and variations on indigo.
The aesthetic, Minney said, is unabashedly feminine: a sort of “Margaret Howell meets Vivienne Westwood.” Some embroidered designs—for instance, florals adorning a dress yoke—can take two days of work. In keeping with its no-plastic stance, Indilisi uses carved coconut shells or corozo for fastenings.
At the same time, prices remain mid-range: 110 pounds ($149) for a reversible blue-plaid maxi frock or 60 pounds ($81) for a frill-neck top in dove gray.
This is where fashion, as a whole, can truly thrive, Minney said: at the apotheosis of slow design, responsible sourcing and deep commitment to regenerating the industry. That’s not to say that technology doesn’t have a place in all this. She plans to introduce digital product passports so owners can trace each garment’s provenance back to the farm level. In Indilisi’s case, this is Chetna Organic, a cooperative of smallholder farms in India that employs regenerative techniques. The brand also works with Thanapara Swallows, a social enterprise in Bangladesh, to handweave and stitch the clothing to life.
But even the most well-meaning visions don’t exist in a vacuum. There are also more systemic headwinds, compounded by the fallout from Brexit and Covid-19, that continue to squeeze British brands—and, by extension, the suppliers that rely on them. A recent Fashion Declares report on the future of fashion regulation in the United Kingdom offered a roadmap centered on three pillars: Shut down tax loopholes for ultra-fast fashion giants, make brands pay for the textile waste they generate and require clear labels showing clothing’s true social and environmental cost.
“Everyone’s chasing the money right now,” Minney said. “If we were chasing the care rather than the money, we’d be in a very different place.”