aastey is India’s first size-inclusive athleisure brand that has signature sustainable blends. TheGlitz spoke to Jeevika Tyagi and Kanupriya Mundhra, the Founders of aastey, to know more about why and how they started this brand.
Tell us about aastey? What made you start this?
The idea of aastey was born in the midst of the pandemic. There was a sense of despair in the air around us and it had begun to affect both the founders mentally and physically. A chance meeting between the two founders, where one had come to interview the other, led to both ladies hitting it off instantly. Soon, they began to share their own feelings of grief brought on by the pandemic, how their own mental health – and that of those around them – was deteriorating, and how depression was becoming commonplace. They realised that they themselves were not creating their own moments of happiness and they had lost a sense of inner peace, which is when they coined the term – live aastey, i.e. to be fully present in every moment. This became the starting point from which the brand was then born.
Their extensive discussions led to talks on body types, and the kind of pressure fashion brands can put on women, especially if they don’t conform to a specific size or weight. The idea was to have one outfit to live in for the rest of your lives. They also acknowledged that the fashion choices in India for modern clothing didn’t follow the principles of ‘live aastey.’ There was no size-inclusive brand in India, that conforms to a woman’s body versus expecting a woman to conform to it. It was at this stage that the ladies jumped at the opportunity to address this situation – and start aastey.
List the three things that make aastey stand out?
All our products are designed to give our aastey tribe a complete wardrobe of sustainable wear with options that take them from day to night with ease. Fitting into a certain size should not be a stress point in their minds.
The three things that make us stand out from the rest are our dedication towards sustainability and fabric innovation for reducing plastic waste and carbon footprint, creating size-inclusive designs and patterns that look good on all bodies and lastly, building a tribe of women who have no restrictions in celebrating themselves and live in the moment.
What are the challenges you’ve faced?
It was tough to build what we have as an aastey product in the market now. No vendor was ready to work with sustainable fabrics. Literally, every manufacturer said no to us when we started on this journey. The fabrics themselves were not easily available in India and building this global supply chain took a long time. But it was worth the time and effort.
Additionally, size inclusivity in the backend means manufacturers making sizes that are not part of their usual cataloging, which is a production challenge. Each size adds up in the cost of manufacturing, from the perspective of labour, time and materials. Manufacturers did not want to work with more sizes. So we had to take a lot of time to develop new size charts and new size specs to produce a good quality size inclusive range.
How do you cope with setbacks and failures?
The only way to cope with any setback is to not give up. We look at the problem and look for the fastest possible solution. Whatever setbacks we face, we take it up as a challenge and make sure we learn from it so the mistakes are not repeated.
We have our TheGlitz superstar tag that we give exceptional brands, what makes Aastey qualify for this?
aastey is India’s first size-inclusive athleisure brand that has also decided to have signature sustainable blends. Our conviction in forging a better path in the athleisure space is what makes our solutions unique. We believe that our continuous effort to make our brand sustainable, from manufacturing to packaging, sets us apart.
