Denica Riadini-Flesch of Indonesian fashion label and social enterprise SukkhaCitta is proving that its farm-to-closet model, rooted in traditional techniques, can successfully reverse the negative environmental effects of fast fashion and that the solutions we need have been right here all along
The scarves on the clothes line billow in the wind, creating voluminous swells of indigo, ochre and midnight blue against the midday sun. The aeolian whip, mixed with the sound of splashing fabric dunked elbow-deep into a vat, the gaiety of children and thrum of motorcycles, makes the daily soundtrack of a rural village in Central Java, Indonesia.
But inside a modest cottage, layered with coats of crisp white paint, the volume is significantly reduced. Sitting on bamboo stools, batik craftswomen, endearingly referred to as ibu, form a loop around a pot of hot beeswax, where they dip their tjantings every so often to refill its small reservoir. The motifs have been previously pencilled on the cotton fabric draping from their lap, but still, an unbroken concentration is essential for every dot and line to ensure uniformity. A steady hand is requisite, but so is a composed mind and heart.
The molten wax permeates the natural fibres to create a double-sided seal. This protective coating isolates the covered areas, ensuring they resist the subsequent dye bath. The latent pattern is finally exposed when the fabric is boiled, where the wax returns to its liquid state.
Batik is a significant part of Southeast Asian culture. While techniques and design vary from country to country, these wax-resistant methods have been around for centuries. Traditionally, they would only be made for personal use or ceremonial purposes. For the Javanese, the craft was a form of storytelling and developed alongside literature, dance and music.
This is but one of the traditional Indonesian practices preserved at Rumah SukkhaCitta, a craft school that empowers women by helping them hone valuable, generational skills while providing business acumen and a living wage for a sustainable livelihood.
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"I think we are successful when we help our customers have a smaller wardrobe," says Riadini-Flesch
A greater calling
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The clothing brand and social enterprise was founded by Denica Riadini-Flesch in 2016. After returning from her studies in the Netherlands, she joined the World Bank as a development economist — a job that required her to travel to rural villages for research.
“I got really frustrated because I started noticing a huge gap between development aid and what communities really needed, which was actually work,” she bemoans.
For the first time, she came face to face with the craftswomen who form the backbone of Indonesia’s vast clothing industry. She was instantly struck by the stark contrast between the beauty of their handcrafted garments and the devastating financial reality: fewer than 2% of these skilled artisans earned a living wage.
Riadini-Flesch admits she was initially naïve, confessing that growing up in bustling Jakarta, she had never once considered how clothes actually made their way into stores.
“You buy it, you wear it, you throw it out. We don’t even think twice. But being there in the villages and meeting the women who still know how to continue ancestral crafts, it made me realise I was part of the problem.
Even though their crafts were beautiful, the reality was they would work 12 to 14 hours a day and barely make a liveable wage. That really broke my heart.”
With no background in business or fashion, Riadini-Flesch took a leap of faith, resigning from her job to lay the groundwork for SukkhaCitta, a name borrowed from the Sanskrit word for happiness. She started with a simple mission: to reconnect.
“I wanted to bridge [the gap between] people from all over the world who, like me, didn’t know these women existed or that their clothes hold so much invisible impact.”
Riadini-Flesch bypassed the layers of middlemen who profited from the women’s labour, using a direct-to-consumer model — through shops and online — to guarantee they received fair compensation for their work.
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“After I solved the issue of living wage, I started noticing a bigger problem, which is the amount of chemicals used in the fashion industry. The most polluted river in the world is located here in Indonesia, where textile factories would dump chemical dyes.
This made me realise the economic opportunities I was providing to the villagers must not come at the expense of the environment,” she asserts.
The Pertiwi Kebaya from SukkhaCitta’s latest collection
Lost + found
Determined to understand how her ancestors coloured textiles before the advent of chemicals, Riadini-Flesch immersed herself in rural communities.
She spoke to grandmothers who remembered what their own grandmothers did and absorbed their inherited recipes for natural mordants and wisdom like a sponge.
“That was really the first interaction I had with the farmers. Before that, I would never put farming and fashion in the same sentence. I realised how profoundly connected they were.”
The indigo plants in Indonesia flourish in direct sunlight, which means if they wanted to scale up, it would require more land and potentially lead to deforestation. During her travels, Riadini-Flesch found a solution: an alternative that grows largely in the Himalayas.
“It’s also indigo, but from a different family known as Strobilanthes cusia. The unique thing about this plant is that it’s short and averse to sunlight. So in villages like this, where you already have a lot of vegetation, you can incorporate it into existing forest structures. We plant it under different trees and it thrives,” she explains.
The freshly harvested leaves are placed into pots filled with water. After three days, the indicans are released and the mixture is aerated to form a concentrated paste. “However, in this form, you can imagine the blue dye as sleeping.
Even though you mix it again with water and dip the fabric into it, it won’t stick. Next is what we call the reduction process — we have to wake it up.
“Unfortunately, most indigo dyers use chemicals such as sodium hydrosulfite, which binds oxygen, during this stage. But then we cannot call it natural. So we used coconut sugar [instead]! This is why we call our dyes SweetIndigo. The interesting thing is if you opt for the chemical reduction process, it has to be disposed of after one use. But with sugar, it can be reused for years. Our vat is more than five years old. We just have to feed it sugar, paste and water, like a pet.”
Today, SukkhaCitta is working with more than 100 farmers to grow this particular variety of indigo that yields a vibrant blue or, with several more dips in the vat, black. Yellow is extracted from foraged Terminalia bellirica fruit that falls after the rainy season, brown from leftover mahogany from the furniture industry, red from medicinal sappanwood and with the help of waste banana stems, pink.
“This was when I realised that solutions already exist in our communities. What we’re doing is trying to create an ecosystem in which their wisdom can lead us to a better future,” she shares.
“After working with the farmers, we started questioning the materials of our clothes, how the fibres were grown.
That led me to some of the driest parts of Indonesia to find the last generations of cotton farmers. I wanted to learn how they did things before monoculture.”
What she discovered surprised her. “They grew cotton in such a different way. We’re used to imagining fields of white, but they grow it like a mini forest, where three to 20 plants thrive together and you don’t need chemicals.
“It was really a lightbulb moment for me. If we could change how something is being made all the way to the farm, we can not only empower communities, but be the solution to climate change by impacting how conventional agriculture is being done.”
A quick motorcycle ride leads directly to one of the farms employing this method to grow cotton for SukkhaCitta.
Here, her husband Bertram Flesch, who is also the chief operating officer, offers more insight.
“The method is called tumpang sari, or regenerative agriculture, where some plants grow taller and others shorter, but they grow together. What we found is that if crops are planted that way, it’s not only better for the soil, but restores its health and allows it to bind carbon from the atmosphere.
“That got us really excited, so we started bringing this programme to other Mama Tanah, or soil mothers, across Indonesia.” he says.
In this farm, the cotton plant is grown alongside peanuts and pumpkins. “There’s always something you can harvest, eat or sell. It’s a way of diversifying your crops and managing risks. The peanuts are legumes that bind nitrogen in the soil, making them natural fertilisers.”
The cotton plant requires plenty of water in its early stages of growth. The flower emerges white from the bud, but turns pink after pollination. Then, it takes about a month of intense heat for the fibres to grow.
Weather patterns used to be very clear back in the day. They would plant in January during the rainy season, negating the need for irrigation, and after three months, the dry season arrives. Farmers can harvest from the same plant over the course of two months and a hectare of land can produce about one tonne of cotton if the weather gods cooperate.
However, sudden spells of rain have been occurring more frequently during the dry season. There were even times when the flowers kept blooming but the cotton never appeared.
“We are working with universities and research institutes to help us find the best ways to adapt to climate change. Each region is different, so we need to find the best intercropping methods to adapt to local conditions. We’re partnering with experts of permaculture and meteorology,” he adds.
Batik craftswomen tracing patterns with wax
Sharing is caring
In 2023, Riadini-Flesch earned her place as one of the five Laureates of the Rolex Awards, which is part of the Swiss watchmaker’s Perpetual Planet Initiative that commits to supporting individuals and organisations using science to understand and devise solutions to current environmental challenges.
Today, SukkhaCitta works with more than a dozen villages all over Indonesia. Together, they have built five schools that specialise in different craft forms, increasing the villagers’ average income by 60% while preventing millions of litres of toxic chemicals from entering rivers. Additionally, over 30ha of degraded soil have been regenerated — all through the power of what you put on your back.
“Of course, when you see SukkhaCitta now, you see the beautiful clothes, but essentially, it has never been just about the clothes. That’s why it’s so important to have initiatives like the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. They are casting a spotlight on people who are doing things differently, putting voices of changemakers here up on stage so you can hear their stories,” she says.
With the support of Rolex, Riadini-Flesch aims to impact 10,000 lives and regenerate 1,000ha of land by 2030. The company is also developing an app containing the digitised curriculum of SukkhaCitta, allowing the project to reach those even in the most remote areas, on different islands and speaking different dialects.
The app will consolidate what they have learnt in the past nine years, from dyeing ratios to the distance needed for one crop to be planted from the next, combining professional expertise from research institutions and, of course, the knowledge of local farmers and craftspeople passed down through generations.
“The beauty of it is that it’s completely scaleable. You can implement the same model in every country with adjustments. We’ve shown that it can be done, but we can’t do it alone,” she emphasises.
Around 15 dips are required to achieve the brand’s signature blue
For life
SukkhaCitta’s Pertiwi collection was created as an ode to the guardians of ibu pertiwi, or motherland. It reimagines Indonesia’s traditional garments, from the kebaya to beskap, through a sculptural lens. The selection comprises refined silhouettes, offering form without rigidity through fluid layering.
Creative director Anastasia Setiobudi is responsible for the timeless designs, crafted in limited quantities. “The production of our clothes follows nature’s cycle, not fashion’s seasons,” she says.
Each garment comes with a lifetime repair guarantee. SukkhaCitta is happy to replace loose buttons or mend a tear from an unexpected tug, highlighting the importance of repair over replacement. Additionally, redye services are also available to those who want to give their SukkhaCitta piece a new lease of life. Naturally-dyed clothing shows a patina of wear and love as they age but since all the pieces are made from 100% plant fibres, the team can restore original hues, or dye them darker for a completely different look. There is also an option of removing sleeves or collars.
If one truly decides to part with one’s SukkhaCitta clothing, the brand will gladly to take it back for recycling or repurposing. In the worst-case scenario, composting is also possible, closing the loop entirely.
“The way we measure success is very paradoxical,” says Riadini-Flesch. “I think we are successful when we help our customers have a smaller wardrobe. It’s measured in two ways: financial sustainability and lives changed or impacted. It’s a delicate balance between profit and purpose that we have to navigate every day, but our North Star is so clear. We want to leave the world a better place than we found it.”
After almost a decade in the industry, Riadini-Flesch has come to dislike the word “sustainability”.
“The way we do things right now is so broken I don’t see a point in sustaining it. It’s a word that’s overused and no one really understands what it means. For us, a more appropriate word is ‘responsibility’. It’s our responsibility to think things differently. The last thing the world needs is another fashion brand, unless you plan to roll up your sleeves and do things differently.
“Reducing harm is no longer enough. With the climate crisis, we’re literally facing multiple planetary breakdowns at the same time. It’s time to find ways to create a positive impact. We can’t tackle the problem with the same mindset that created it.
“Doing the right thing comes at a cost. We live in a world where we are so used to clothes being as cheap as coffee. How do you get people to understand that what you’re paying is not the real price, that someone else is paying the cost? It’s either the earth or community that’s subsidising the cost of our choices.”
SukkhaCitta holds educational programmes and exhibitions to raise awareness of the clothing production process. “We live in a world where mass production is systematically disconnecting us from the stories, so we are more comfortable buying into trends. But if people know the full journey, then they are empowered to make choices that align with their values. We try to bring that experience of the village to the cities to hopefully help them be more conscious customers.”
SukkhaCitta’s collections are available online and in boutiques in Jakarta. A limited selection is consigned to locations in Sumba and Bali, with international representation in New York and Singapore.
Riadini-Flesch’s work is highly dynamic, shifting rapidly from attending city events to articulate her vision to personally keeping villagers up to speed in the rural kampung.
“I feel like a bridge between worlds. It’s very exciting because it allows you to grow in ways you probably wouldn’t be able to in any other job
“Right now, our focus is on helping people reconnect. How do we invite more people to become part of the journey? How do we change hearts, not minds?
“What you see outside, all the issues happening — it’s a reflection of what’s happening inside. You really are connected to so many things, but if you reclaim that connection first and foremost with yourself, I think we’ll have a profoundly kinder world.”
