Craft has always been more than decoration or tradition. It is labor, culture, and knowledge woven into the very fabric of society. From the handloom weavers of Bangladesh to the embroidery clusters of India and Pakistan, South Asia’s artisans sustain practices that have shaped global design for centuries. Yet their contributions are too often hidden in opaque supply chains and overlooked in glossy brand reports.

The Good to Great Podcast, hosted by Masrur Rahman, dives into this critical conversation by welcoming Carry Somers - an internationally recognized changemaker, author, and co-founder of Fashion Revolution, the world’s largest fashion activism movement. She also co-founded the League of Artisans, which recently published the groundbreaking Crafted Report and its companion framework, the Artisans Index. These initiatives shine a light on the role of South Asia’s artisans while exposing the gaps in how global brands disclose their social and environmental impacts.

What emerges is a blueprint for transparency that puts artisans at the heart of global transformation.

Carry Somers | Co-Founder of Fashion Revolution and League of Artisans

Why Transparency Matters in South Asia

South Asia is home to some of the world’s richest craft traditions—handloom weaving, embroidery, leatherwork, and natural dyeing. These practices not only sustain local economies but also shape global design trends. Yet, as Carry explains, artisans remain largely invisible in official supply chain disclosures.

“Outside the luxury maisons where craft may be more integrated, artisan production is typically decentralized, home-based, or informal. It sits in a part of the supply chain where brands rarely measure their environmental harm, let alone take responsibility for it,” she notes.

This invisibility has real consequences. Many artisans face wage delays, lack of credit, or demands to finance materials upfront. Without financial security, adopting sustainable practices becomes nearly impossible. On top of that, appropriation of designs without recognition or benefit-sharing erodes cultural integrity.

As Carry points out, “Too many brands still draw on traditional designs without free, prior, and informed consent. Artisans’ intellectual and cultural contributions continue to be undervalued, despite underpinning the lucrative product lines of the world’s biggest brands.”

The transparency gap is therefore not just about information. It is about justice—economic, cultural, and environmental.

The Crafted Report: Making the Invisible Visible

Published by the League of Artisans, the Crafted Report is the first research project to benchmark how fifty major brands disclose the impacts of artisanal textile production. Built with input from Keele University and supported by the Impact Plus Innovation Network, it combined traditional research with on-the-ground fieldwork, community interviews, and environmental data mapping.

The result was the Artisans Index, a diagnostic tool that evaluates disclosures across multiple indicators—from wages and workplace safety to soil testing and biodiversity monitoring.

“What’s disclosed is often uneven, superficial, and difficult to find, buried in corporate websites and sustainability reports instead of on product pages where customers can access it,” Carry explains. “For instance, while most brands reveal the material composition of artisanal products, only twelve percent disclose air quality monitoring and just four percent disclose soil testing at tier-two facilities.”

The Crafted Report reframes disclosure as more than a compliance exercise. It demonstrates that genuine transparency requires cultural and ecological accountability.

Culture and Ecology: Two Sides of Transparency

One of the Crafted Report’s most radical contributions is its insistence that cultural rights and ecological resilience are inseparable. Carry is clear: “Too often sustainability is measured only in carbon, while cultural rights are treated as secondary or worse, as decorative.”

Craft is rooted in place. It depends on soils, water cycles, dye plants, and ecological rhythms. When these are disrupted, cultural knowledge systems unravel. Carry cites India’s Kutch region, where “erratic rainfall and rising salinity are disrupting dye traditions that have endured for centuries.”

By evaluating whether brands credit artisans, respect prior consent, and commit to benefit-sharing alongside environmental testing, the Artisans Index positions cultural rights as central to transparency. This dual focus challenges the industry to see artisans not as marginal but as knowledge holders whose practices model sustainability.

“Safeguarding cultural heritage isn’t a sideline,” Carry emphasizes. “Artisans aren’t just victims of ecological crises; they are innovators whose traditions can guide us towards more resilient futures.”

Tools for Transparent Futures

Transparency does not thrive in reports alone—it requires practical tools that connect data to people. The Crafted Report highlights innovation as a key enabler of more transparent systems.

Eco-mapping: An open-source tool that allows even small workshops to map water, waste, and energy flows visually. “This makes environmental stewardship accessible to informal producers, even those with low literacy,” Carry explains.
Blockchain: A technology that can verify records of wages paid, materials used, and environmental impacts. It prevents greenwashing and builds trust across supply chains.
Digital Product Passports (DPPs): These link artisan contributions directly to consumers. “Imagine scanning a QR code and seeing not just the fiber breakdown but the names of the artisans, the dye plants used, and the environmental footprint for each product,” Carry says.

Together, these tools redefine transparency by moving it from static reports to dynamic, product-level engagement.

South Asia’s Blueprint for Change

The Crafted Report offers more than critique. It proposes a blueprint that can reorient the entire system. By exposing gaps and highlighting good practices, it shows how South Asia’s artisan networks can lead the way in defining transparency standards for the future.

Carry describes the Artisans Index as “both diagnostic and solution-oriented. It shows us where the gaps are and where better practice is emerging. It shifts the conversation from artisans as invisible labour to artisans as co-creators of future-proof systems.”

For South Asia, this blueprint is especially powerful. The region’s crafts are already globally recognized, yet its artisans often face systemic inequities. By placing transparency at the center, the Crafted Report affirms that accountability must extend to those most responsible for heritage and sustainability.

Looking Ahead: Building Momentum

The Crafted Report is only in its first year. As Carry points out, “A baseline is just that—a starting point. The real movement comes in subsequent years when brands start to engage with the methodology and begin to see it not as criticism but as a roadmap.”

Her ambition is to secure multi-year funding to track progress, expand coverage beyond clothing into homeware, and amplify best practices.

But transparency is not solely the responsibility of brands and policymakers. Citizens, too, play a crucial role. “We know that citizens have power. The questions that we’re all asking—where was this made, who made it—these are the questions the index is designed to answer. Customer curiosity can really help increase accountability,” Carry says.

The combination of engaged citizens and transparent disclosures could become a powerful driver of systemic change.

Storytelling as a Force for Transparency

Transparency is not just about data; it is about narrative. Carry’s upcoming book, The Nature of Fashion, embodies this philosophy by tracing the intertwined history of plants and textiles.

“It is a vivid, impassioned, and celebratory journey through the history of how we learned to create clothing with plants,” she explains. The book moves across millennia, from ancient bark fibers to Marie Antoinette’s fast-paced trends, showing how natural fibers have shaped human history.

By reconnecting readers with plant-based traditions and ecological rhythms, Carry invites us to see transparency not as a technical exercise but as a deeper recognition of how culture and ecology interweave.

Press Release | The Nature of Fashion by Carry Somers

Conclusion: Unveiling a Transparent Future

The conversation between Masrur Rahman and Carry Somers reveals a compelling truth: transparency is not a matter of publishing more data, but of valuing the people and ecosystems that sustain global industries.

The Crafted Report, published by the League of Artisans, is South Asia’s blueprint for a new kind of accountability. It integrates cultural rights with ecological resilience, pairs innovation with heritage, and positions artisans not at the margins but at the center of global transformation.

As Carry reminds us, “Together, we can make sure that progress isn’t just about reports, pledges, or the next initiative, but about real change that benefits artisans, garment workers, and the environment that craft depends on.”

South Asia’s artisans hold the threads of tradition and innovation. By unveiling their contributions through transparency, the world has a chance to weave a future that is fairer, more resilient, and more human.

Download the report: https://leagueofartisans.org/crafted

UNVEILING THE CRAFTED REPORT: SOUTH ASIA’S BLUEPRINT FOR A MORE TRANSPARENT INDUSTRY