Apparel August 2019 Apparel August 2019 issue | Page 87

UNIQUE INITIATIVE
societies, and retailers, thus making the products
reasonable for mainstream customers. This,
in turn, would increase the demand of these
products,” Bina says.
CREATIVE BEE
After gaining a master’s in fine arts, Bina pursued
a course in textile design at National Institute of
Design (NID), Ahmedabad (1981–1983). During
her time there, she worked on a sample loom
that set off her passionate journey with textiles. In
1998, she and her husband Keshav Rao, an artist
and expert in natural dyes, established Creative
Bee, a design studio in Hyderabad to promote
handlooms and natural dyes.
In the course of the past two decades, Creative
Bee has grown from a small to a midscale social
business with integrated facilities providing
sustainable livelihoods to a few hundred artisans
to design and produce high-quality, handcrafted
textiles for retail as well as export. Keshav and
Bina have been consultants and advisors on
several government and institutional committees
and have been senior consultants for projects
with the United Nations; they have travelled
extensively, met hundreds of textile artisans, and
worked with them closely to create exquisite
handloom products.
“Creative Bee has been extensively working
with the rural handloom and handicraft sectors in
order to improve the livelihood of artisans through
quality, design, and marketing interventions. In
the process, we have established long-standing
relationships with over 500 weavers and their
families. Considering that this is merely a drop in
the ocean, we have, for the past decade and a
half, been implementing short-term projects by
the Government of India and United Nations, in
an attempt to benefit a greater number of artisans
in an ever-growing geographical scope,”
adds Bina.
KEEN TO GIVE BACK
Bina has always been keen on working towards the
betterment of the handloom industry. So even as
she acknowledges that Creative Bee, as a design
studio, plays its part in the same, she
felt the need to create an independent and
alternative label that would work towards
sustainable livelihoods.
She further says, “Though all Creative Bee
products are 100 per cent artisanal, our main
line of products sells at premium prices due
to our insistence on paying our artisans fair
wages, our selection of the finest yarns, and the
additional hand-techniques that we employ, such
as natural dyes, block-printing, and shibori on
loom-ready fabric. However, for years, we have
been conceptualising a brand that would market
the artisans’ own products and connect them
directly to the end consumer, helping them in
avoiding losses incurred through middlemen and
earning them the true value of their products. We
also wanted the products to be priced in a way
that everyone is able to afford them and, in turn,
supports the artisans and their industry.”
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