Khushi Kantha – Handmade Baby Blankets
Khushi Kantha (Happy Blanket) creates sustainable, multi-purpose baby blankets with a vibrant ‘stand out’ factor, hand-stitched from ethically-sourced cotton and embroidered with empowerment by mothers in Bangladesh.
Why We Love this brand
Khushi Kantha creates one-of-a-kind, multi-purpose baby blankets hand-stitched from reclaimed and ethically-sourced cotton by mothers in Bangladesh.
Motherhood is the most rewarding job in the world – but it’s also the hardest. Every day brings new challenges and for some, these challenges include being able to meet basic needs, like food, clothing and education.
Khushi Kantha creates opportunities for mothers in Bangladesh to provide for their children with dignity.
We Asked the brand...
WHAT IS YOUR brand's VISION FOR SUSTAINABILITY?
‘Kantha’ (which translates as “stitched cloth”) refers to the Bengali tradition of repurposing old cotton saris to create ultra-soft, multi-layered blankets, especially for babies. ‘Kantha’ can also simply mean ‘blanket’. ‘Khushi’ is the Bengali term for ‘happy’ – ‘Khushi Kantha’ therefore means ‘Happy Blanket’. We’re reworking the ‘kantha’ approach to meet global hygiene and safety standards, while retaining the principles of reclaim-repurpose-reuse and bringing the cultural heritage of Bangladesh to a wider audience.
SUSTAINABILITY FACTORS
Full Brand Story
The idea behind Khushi Kantha was inspired by the birth of Laura Rana’s half-British, half-Bangladeshi (and 100% cheeky!) twin daughters and her twelve years of experience of working with Bangladeshi mothers living below the poverty line.
Time and time again, she’s been amazed by the resilience and strength of the mothers she’s encountered, and it’s been her long-standing dream to use everything she’s experienced and learned to start her own initiative, working directly with women whose position she could so easily be in herself if circumstances were different.
When she became pregnant while working on the humanitarian response to the Rohingya refugee crisis, she couldn’t stop thinking about all the opportunities her daughters would have, and how unfair it was that the mothers all around couldn’t give their children the same opportunities. She knew first hand, that every mother wants the best for her children, and she will use every resource available to offer them the future they deserve.
Khushi Kantha is her response to that feeling. As a social enterprise, Khushi Kantha enables mothers to use their existing skills and draw on their cultural heritage to generate sustainable incomes. By partnering with them to create exquisitely hand-stitched baby blankets, embroidered with empowerment from mother to mother.
They promote the circular economy and the ever, important shift from ‘take-make-waste’ to ‘reclaim-repurpose-reuse,’ through every part of their brand – through their name and into every piece of their operation.
‘Kantha’ (which translates as “stitched cloth”) refers to the Bengali tradition of repurposing old cotton saris to create ultra-soft, multi-layered blankets, especially for babies.
‘Kantha’ can also simply mean ‘blanket’. ‘Khushi’ is the Bengali term for ‘happy’ – ‘Khushi Kantha’ therefore means ‘Happy Blanket’.
Khushi Kantha is reworking the ‘kantha’ approach to meet global hygiene and safety standards, while retaining the principles of reclaim-repurpose-reuse and bringing the cultural heritage of Bangladesh to a wider audience.
