Behno

Behno

Where luxury design meets ethical thinking

by Michael Daks

Behno is a NYC-based handbag company whose goal is to bring ethics and sustainability to fashion and to set a new standard in manufacturing for the industry, specifically the way garment workers are treated.

They call it ‘The behno Standard’. This ethos is broken down into six categories: health, garment worker mobility, family planning, women’s rights, worker satisfaction & benefits, and eco-consciousness.

On 24 April 2013, the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which housed five garment factories, killed at least 1,132 people and injured more than 2,500. Most of these were women earning less than $1 a day.

At this time, Shivam Punjya, the founder and creative director of behno, was studying for his masters in Global Health at Duke University and writing his thesis on women’s health in India. This tragic event touched him in a significant and emotional way; so much so that his close family advised him to either accept it or to do something about it.

His father said, “Either you make peace with it or you do something about it.”

So, in 2014, Shivam founded behno to show how highquality clothing could be made ethically in India. He partnered with non-profit Muni Seva Ashram (MSA) and industry veteran Mukesh Kothari to build a factory called MSA Ethos.

At its factories, each female colleague is addressed by the surname behn (“sister” in Hindi), symbolizing the sisterhood of empowered employees the brand strives to create. Initially set up as a ready-to-wear business, they now specialize in handbags.

Originally we were designing ready to-wear, but the market was extremely difficult to penetrate and we were also sampling handbags just for fun. A lot of the buyers were taking interest in the bags, so as a company we decided that it made more sense to pivot and concentrate on the bags.

They partner with nine factories in India, which all comply to ‘The behno Standard,’ and their leather comes from one of the world’s finest tanneries in Italy. It is a Gold Member, the highest status awarded by the Leather Working Group, a consortium that develops and maintains rigid protocols to assess the environmental compliance and performance capabilities of leather manufacturers, to promote sustainability and transparency.

I had a conscious vision to challenge the stereotype that ‘Made in India’ meant hippy dippy like the Tibetan store down the street, so the collections were deliberately tailored and minimal.

In 2018, the Queen invited Shivam to Buckingham Palace for The Commonwealth Fashion Exchange to present an ethical fashion evening wear look to HRH Kate Middleton, The Duchess of Cambridge.

Behno incorporated elements from the Commonwealth countries of India and Tuvalu, an island country in the Polynesian subregion of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean, into a look that was presented to the Royal family and celebrated in a reception attended by industry leaders, including Anna Wintour and Edward Enninful of US and UK VOGUE.

Read more at https://issuu.com/rareluxuryliving/docs/raremagazinesustainablepages/166