Why the future of fashion is ‘farm to closet'

National Geographic

20-05-2025

Indonesian fashion brand SukkhaCitta is embracing traditional techniques and partnering with Indigenous artisans and farmers to create and sell clothes, such as the Kebaya vest. Photographs by Muhammad Fadli
On a damp December morning in the mountainous district of Ambarawa in Central Java, a woman in an inky black sleeveless vest and gathered skirt balances herself on the back of a motorbike that carries her through a small village, past houses adorned with tropical plants and birdcages, and into a forest. The land here, some 300 miles east of Indonesia's capital of Jakarta, brims with shrubs and trees that grow a variety of crops, including cassava and coffee. But it's the forest floor that's brought Denica Riadini-Flesch, 34, to this corner of her home country. Under the shade of banana, papaya, and coconut trees, she's trying to seed a revolution—in the form of hundreds of vibrant indigo plants, all casting a glossy viridescence across the soil. Farmer Kasmini (right) spins raw cotton to make thread for weaving fabric. She's supported by fellow farmers Tasminas (left) and Karmini (center), first stretching and fluffing cotton by hand while Karmini's grandson watches.
Riadini-Flesch is the founder of SukkhaCitta, a fashion brand that partners with hundreds of Indonesian farmers and artisans on Java and in neighboring Bali, Flores, and West Timor. And it's her company that inspired the success of this burgeoning crop. Indigo comes in many varieties, but one commonly used in Ambarawa needs profuse sunlight. Riadini-Flesch realized that boosting growth would require cutting down trees. Instead, she offered the farmers an alternative: a hardy varietal called Assam indigo, which flourishes in the shade. Today the forest is awash with indigo that brings vital income into the community while fueling a kaleidoscope of colorful dyes for SukkhaCitta's clothing.
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This includes the very garments Riadini-Flesch is wearing, which achieved their botanical black hue after being dipped into fermented indigo leaves 30 times. Such a meticulous process is at the heart of SukkhaCitta's environmentally responsible and ethical fashion brand. The Kapas kebaya vest she's wearing retails for $320, and the Angkasa Constellation kain, a fabric she ties into a sarong, sells for about $500—pricing that reflects the workmanship of each garment. As she stands among the trees, Riadini-Flesch exudes a sense of awe that she hopes to convey to her customers. 'This,' she says excitedly, 'is a fashion forest.' SukkhaCitta founder Denica Riadini-Flesch stands amid a crop of indigo in a forest in Central Java. The ancient pigment used in fabric dyeing is often grown in open fields. But SukkhaCitta encourages farmers to plant a varietal that requires less sunlight, to prevent deforestation.
Indigo is just one ingredient in SukkhaCitta's radically transparent supply chain. Every piece of fabric in the brand's farm-to-closet collection is crafted out of 100 percent plants, from traceable natural fibers to regeneratively grown plant dyes. Cotton fibers are hand-spun and woven on manual looms. Fabrics are decorated by Indigenous artisans practicing an intricate hand-drawn wax technique called batik before being dipped into vats of color, dried in the sun, and finally cut and stitched into clothing. The entire process, from seed to garment, takes about 60 to 180 days. Once completed, clothing is sent to SukkhaCitta's flagship store in Jakarta, marketed online, or sold at select boutiques in Singapore and New York, where clients are increasingly inclined to put their dollars toward an elegant dress or a pair of pants designed by brands that prioritize their social and environmental impact on the world. In Central Java, one of SukkhaCitta's partner villages emerges from the fog while two of the island's volcanoes loom beyond it. Since launching in 2016, SukkhaCitta has partnered with 11 villages across four islands, bringing more prosperity to rural areas.
The so-called slow-fashion movement has arisen in direct opposition to the values of fast fashion, the prevailing, factory-led process that's rife with excess and waste. Many of today's clothingmakers contribute to a $100 billion-plus industry of cheap polyester T-shirts and spandex leggings, which comes at the cost of both exploited workers and the environment. In Indonesia, the Citarum River, a main source of drinking water and irrigation, is contaminated by toxic chemicals dumped into the waterway by the textile factories that line its banks. And the global impact stretches farther: From the Atacama Desert in northern Chile to a landfill outside of Ghana's capital of Accra, mountains of discarded clothes pile higher each year.
(​Fast fashion goes to die in the world's largest fog desert. The scale is breathtaking.)
Riadini-Flesch believes that empowering consumers with knowledge about how their clothes are made—be it the plants that color them or the artisans who stitch them—will lead to a deeper relationship with what they wear, a stronger appreciation for both the craft and the product, and a realization that the choices we make as consumers directly affect people and the planet. She's already drawn an impressive roster of influential supporters. Rock musician Chris Martin from Coldplay, National Geographic Explorer at Large and oceanographer Sylvia Earle, and celebrated cellist Yo-Yo Ma have been spotted in SukkhaCitta garments. 'Denica's journey is testament to the best kind of cultural thinking,' says Ma, who has kept in touch with the founder, 'powered by a willingness to put in deep work with head, heart, and hands.' Sukkha­Citta offers an alterna­tive to factory-made clothing by working with regenerative cotton farmers like Ely Yulianti. SukkhaCitta supports the Indigenous technique of tumpang sari, wherein seedlings, shown here, are planted alongside crops like peanuts and chilis that help replenish the soil and repel pests. A farmer examines a harvest of cotton. Alintehn, a fellow regenerative cotton farmer, works in one of Sukkha­Citta's partner villages.
SukkhaCitta is not the first brand to provide an alternative blueprint to how fashion is created. And it's met a fundamental truth head-on: Clothes made with care and intention are going to be relatively more expensive than the alternatives. But Riadini-Flesch believes that if shoppers understand the value of what they're paying for, they'll realize that cheap garments bear a far greater cost. 'Clothes won't change the world, but the people wearing them will,' she says. Her journey started with thinking about how she could use her own knowledge as a bridge to uplift others and replenish the planet. As one of the foundations of SukkhaCitta's collections, the company has focused on partnering with farmers to move away from monoculture cotton production. SukkhaCitta's founder, Riadini-Flesch, has been adamant in her desire to center authenticity and fair compensation for skilled labor, such as cotton weaving, in the production of the brand's clothes.
While Indonesia has made strides in reducing poverty, 9 percent of the population still struggles to make a living wage. That's roughly 24 million people, many of whom live in rural villages. Growing up in Jakarta, Riadini-Flesch experienced the country's deeply rooted issues with inequality and studied developmental economics in college. After a stint working at the World Bank, she gained her most sobering understanding of what that truth looks like when she began traveling the countryside in 2013.
Riadini-Flesch knew nothing about fashion, but one day she met three batik artisans in a village on the outskirts of Tuban, in East Java. The women told her that they had learned the ancient craft from their mothers, who had used natural dyes to color their fabrics. But their tradition was at risk. With limited resources, the artisans had switched to cheaper and more readily available chemical dyes that burned their lungs, yet even then they could not compete with the speed of factory-printed textiles. All were mothers, or ibus, who worried about feeding their families.
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Until then, Riadini-Flesch had never thought about how clothing was created. 'It made me realize that without knowing it, I was part of the problem,' she says. Indigo farmer Muhammad Khoerul Uman holds up a fresh harvest of Assam indigo. As with the regeneratively farmed cotton, the indigo is planted alongside crops like coffee and cassava to keep the soil and the ecosystem healthy. Between the forest floor and the showroom, the indigo leaves undergo a labor-intensive process to produce the rich dyes used for SukkhaCitta's clothes. In Central Java, palm sugar farmer Maat scales a tree to harvest the sap, a critical ingredient in SukkhaCitta's all­-natural dyeing process. Sugar from the sap is used as an activator for the indigo, helping create rich hues for the company's fabrics.
In the months that followed, Riadini-Flesch saw other problems in the modern fashion supply chain, which affected not only the artisans but also farmers, who had abandoned cotton growing for monoculture crops like corn, thereby degrading the health of the soil, plants, and wildlife that thrived with agricultural diversity. Both of these age-old practices, craft and farming, were deeply rooted in village life; they just needed to be restored. Slow fashion, she realized, could create a new vehicle for change.
Early on, the ibus were wary of Riadini-Flesch because of stark class divisions in Indonesian society. Although she had only $2,000 to invest, she put that money into paying the batik artisans a living wage, which allowed her to create her first sample: a bandanna she called Kupu, or butterfly. By 2019, three years after incorporating, the company had drawn enough interest from residents near Tuban to open its first craft school with the Rumah SukkhaCitta Foundation, which is funded by the company's profits, donations, grants, and entrepreneurship awards from nonprofits and aid groups. At a craft school funded by SukkhaCitta, practitioners make indigo dye using passed-down techniques, fermenting the leaves in a concrete tub before mixing the water with limestone to produce a thick, bubbly liquid. Made with the brand's regeneratively grown cotton, the Sinar Beskap overcoat was dyed in indigo 30 times to achieve its black hue.
The schools provide workshops where artisans can teach batik to younger generations and farmers can learn about regenerative ways to plant cotton. Villagers are now leveraging an Indigenous technique known locally as tumpang sari, which prioritizes the cultivation of multiple plants together, allowing them to nourish each other. Cotton is planted alongside corn, which provides shade; chilis help control pests; and peanuts add nitrogen to the soil. The approach allows rural Indonesians to grow cotton for SukkhaCitta while providing more food for their families and additional vegetables or nuts that can be sold for extra income.
Now, Riadini-Flesch and the ibus embrace each other as family. On a recent visit, she bantered with the women as they dipped their tools, or tjantings, into bowls of hot wax and traced motifs onto fabric. A sense of trust enveloped the group. Reclaiming their craft has allowed the women to restore their identity. 'It isn't blood that flows through our veins,' one of the ibus once told Riadini-Flesch. 'It's hot wax.' The waste from many clothing manufacturers' synthetic dyes has poisoned some of Indonesia's rivers. SukkhaCitta's dyeing process offers a natural alternative, for workers and the environment. Each SukkhaCitta piece takes between 60 and 180 days to go from cotton planting to the brand's flagship store in Jakarta. The clothing is also sold online and at boutiques in New York and Singapore.
From the start, SukkhaCitta has worked to raise the standard of living for the people in its partner villages. That includes using some profits to create grants for villagers who are interested in purchasing farmland. The women are also trained to reappraise both the social and monetary value of their work. Rather than negotiate payment after their labor is complete, as many had in the past, they are taught to track the time it takes them to complete a design or even a cotton harvest. SukkhaCitta then uses that number to calculate a higher wage, increasing their income significantly.
Initiatives like these have established Riadini-Flesch as a role model for other entrepreneurs and helped boost the company's following on social media. SukkhaCitta's clothes have been featured in Vogue's Singapore edition, and sales are now increasing by 30 to 40 percent annually, she says, allowing the company to bring economic opportunities to the villagers. Linna Setyowati, 32, received a grant from SukkhaCitta to purchase a two-and-a-half-acre plot of land, which she nourished back to health after its degradation by chemical weedkillers and fertilizers. She's now following the principles of tumpang sari as she waits for her cotton bolls to be ready for harvest. The land is 'fresher,' she says. 'It's healthy.'
And most important, it's hers. Batik artisans Agustin Ningrum, left, and Muntiani, right, seen here before the Java Sea, work with Sukkha­Citta to detail the brand's clothes.
Across the globe, other entrepreneurs are developing their own slow-fashion enterprises. The offerings range from ethically sourced alpaca sweaters made in Peru to vegan leather derived from Sicilian cacti and oranges. Angelina Jolie recently opened a workshop in Manhattan, where clients can remake their own garments into new one-of-a-kind designs. For her part, Riadini-Flesch admires the French brand Veja, which makes sneakers out of organic cotton and Amazonian rubber. Like Veja, which rebranded the shopping frenzy of Black Friday to 'Repair Friday,' SukkhaCitta encourages customers to return their clothing for mending or re-dyeing, and the brand offers a lifetime repair guarantee.
(Mushroom leather? The future of fashion is closer than you think.)
As Riadini-Flesch sees it, these kinds of ventures offer new ways for people to understand that there's an alternative to extractive fashion. 'I never consider ourselves to have competitors,' she says. 'It's about changing the paradigm.'
One of her latest efforts transpired in November 2024, when SukkhaCitta opened a pop-up boutique at an upscale mall, its second location in Jakarta. While the garments for sale range from an indigo shirt decorated with geometric stars to a yellow dress whose color is derived from Java's golden jelawe fruit, one of the store's primary purposes is to showcase a traveling exhibition about SukkhaCitta's supply chain. Glass containers hold soil from the villagers' farms. The life cycle of a cotton plant is on display. And a video features interviews with the ibus, showing the invisible love and labor behind each product. One of the most striking presentations explains how the brand's garments are specifically made to return to the earth rather than wind up in landfills: A display case lined with soil shows a single cut of SukkhaCitta cotton as it degrades progressively over the course of six weeks, ultimately turning into tiny fragments that can be used in compost. Riadini-Flesch hopes to take the exhibition international, sharing it at more pop-up stores. In practicing the art of batik, artisans carefully use hot wax to draw intricate designs on the fabric. SukkhaCitta, which counts Coldplay's Chris Martin and cellist Yo­-Yo Ma among its supporters, has steadily grown its sales in recent years. After these clothes leave the showroom, they can eventually return to the earth. Riadini­-Flesch has ensured that her fashion line is biodegradable.
In part to inspire other brands, she's also tracking how well her practices are working by earning fair-labor and environmental-impact certifications from watchdog groups like Nest, a nonprofit that verifies ethical work standards, and the Science Based Targets initiative, a climate-action organization that measures greenhouse gas emissions. Recently, SukkhaCitta became the first fashion company in Indonesia to secure B Corp certification as a business that is committed to transparency and accountability. The brand's approach signals a remarkable mix of business acumen and social purpose by not just scaling for profit but also 'scaling impact,' says Sarah Schwimmer, who runs B Lab Global, the nonprofit behind the certification. 'She is demonstrating a new way forward,' Schwimmer says.
Over the past four years, the brand has opened four additional craft schools, launched a spin-off materials platform so that others can source SukkhaCitta's regenerative materials, and established partnerships with 11 villages. The company plans to cap rather than grow that number, so it can boost the resources it provides to each location. So far, SukkhaCitta has helped communities transform roughly 118 acres of previously commercial farmland, which has had a direct impact on more than 1,500 lives there. By 2030, it expects to ramp up to more than 2,400 acres and reach up to 10,000 people. From the fields to the shopping mall, SukkhaCitta stands among an increasing number of brands to draw up and follow a blueprint that keeps cotton farmers like Karmini, Tasminas, Parti, and Kasmini at the forefront of their business model.
One thing SukkhaCitta will not do is follow traditional seasonal fashion calendars or overexert the artisans or the lands it manages. If demand for a product skyrockets and the elements won't allow it, the company will simply be sold out.
'You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet,' Riadini-Flesch says.
It is wisdom shared by the ibus, who also taught Riadini-Flesch a philosophy that inspires her every day: 'Urip Iku Urup.' We live to bring light.
(Ready to give up fast fashion? Give 'slow fashion' a try.) A version of this story appears in the June 2025 issue of National Geographic magazine.
For this project, Claudia Kalb traveled to Java from her home in Alexandria, Virginia. Her last piece for National Geographic explored new ways of caring for people with dementia.
Jakarta-based Muhammad Fadli journeyed through Java and Lombok, Indonesia, to photograph the people and processes at the center of this story. His photos have appeared in Time, Der Spiegel, and other publications.