A sari: five yards of unstitched fabric ingeniously wrapped and draped. Nowadays, with the exhausting rhythm of fashion, tons of unwanted secondhand saris are discarded every day and collected by India’s informal rag-picker community who resell these fabrics. This task has gotten harder and harder to do as India’s GDP per capita rises along with a distaste for secondhand.

Back in 2010, Bijal Shah was working on slum development issues as a fellow of the AIF-Clinton Foundation for the NGO SAATH in Gujarat, India. In a sea of beautiful second hand sari fabric, she had the idea to turn secondhand Indian saris into one of a kind, exciting products.

She created lallitara a fashion brand focused on sustainable retailing. The saris are bought from gujarati sari-collectors for 3 times their market value. 10% of lallitara’s profits fund  SAATH, the NGO manages one-stop centres giving slum residents access to services such as health, education, employment, micro finance and affordable housing.

This spring lallitara partners up with the Council of the Arts at MIT to host SariFixation: A ReDesign Challenge. Contestants from all over the world supply their creativity and design chops, and they are provided with secondhand saris to make their own creations.

And you can browse these creations all participate and vote now here : http://www.sarifixation.com/show_proj.php