Spreading Joy

Through fashion, newly minted Rolex Awards for Enterprise Laureate Denica Riadini-Flesch simultaneously empowers rural women and tackles environmental issues in Indonesia

- Brian Cheong

It wasn’t enough for former World Bank development economist Denica RiadiniFlesch to make a change in communities from a distance; she felt compelled to be right in the heart of it. In 2016, she founded SukkhaCitta (the name is a play on the word “joy” in Indonesian) to work alongside women in the textile industry in Indonesia to ensure that they earn a fair living wage.

Employing the “farm to closet” concept, the social enterprise helps these women artisans to thrive by providing their work with access to the global market. SukkhaCitta makes beautiful clothing for women and men. Each piece of garment is made 100 per cent from materials from the soil, from the cotton to the dye.

The traditional clothing with a contemporary stylish twist has a huge online following although Riadini-Flesch admitted that she never set out to create a fashion brand. “SukkhaCitta is my model for change, not a fashion brand,” she once said. “My intention was for it to be a platform to address a real, systematic problem faced by our most vulnerable artisans.”

Indeed, SukkhaCitta’s success meant an increase of 60 per cent in average earnings for the women, resulting in a dramatic shift in gender roles within their communities.

In an industry that produces massive waste, the SukkhaCitta story is even more impressive when factoring in the fact that it is certified as a B Corporation for meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, and Ethically Handcrafted by NEST.

Today, SukkhaCitta works directly with over 400 craftspeople and smallholder farmers, impacting more than 1,500 lives. It grows its own cotton through regenerative farming where cotton is planted alongside other crops to increase yields and regenerate soils, and uses only natural dyes from plants grown by the farmers.

Riadini-Flesch, 33, has clearly succeeded in what she set out to do, so now is the time to dream bigger.