A Letter to Karma
First of all, thank you :)
for being here, for your curiosity,
for lending your precious energy to the form of Karma Kouture.
It means the world to me,
and I know it will come to mean something to you too.
This story begins where fashion once broke my heart,
and slowly taught me how to heal it through creation.
True Tears
During my fashion studies, I fell in love with the transformative power of clothing,
the way dressing the self could give visibility to our inner identity,
a mirror of who we are, what we believe in,
and the impact we wish to leave behind.
But the more I educated myself about the industry,
the more painful truths I uncovered behind the garments we wear.
How can I feel beautiful if someone else is suffering for it?
How can I admire my reflection if sacred rivers are being polluted in its name?
That contradiction couldn’t make sense to me.
My pretty new dress, once a source of deep love, suddenly became an egocentric decision, knowing a seven-year-old girl could have made it for less than a living wage.
The desire I felt for fashion turned into true tears, for how far removed we’ve become from the consequences of our consumption, how easily the truth gets censored, so that only the pretty part remains.
Because deep down I knew:
if you really knew the stories behind what we buy,
you could never feel at peace with unconscious decisions.
If the label would say:
“Made in India by Sheila, 7 years old,
earning €1 for a 12-hour working day”
Would you still feel beautiful in that dress?
Wild Desires
Since childhood, I’ve felt a pull toward India —
its spirituality, its colors, its truth.
After feeling anxious and small during my fashion studies,
I felt a deep need to reconnect with myself.
Something in me remembered my desire to visit India,
to listen, to breathe, to feel life again.
People told me it was too much to go alone at 21.
But sometimes, following inner intuition means breaking surrounding logic.
So I went.
I lived, I laughed, I loved.
And I came home with my heart full of truths,
and a few garments made one-to-one in collaboration
with Indian artisans, woven from love and conversation.
Back in the Netherlands, the response was immediate:
“Where did you get that dress?”
That moment sparked a fire.
Maybe the answer wasn’t to run away from fashion,
but to step deeper into it — into something truer.
Even if my impact seemed small, I realized:
I have the power to make a difference.
And even the smallest difference made with love
can grow into something far greater.
Karmic Decisions
If I was going to build a brand,
I wanted every step of the way to be harmless —
to the planet and to the people.
Every new way of producing comes with a cost,
unless we use what already exists.
At 22, I reached out to a recycling community in India (Saahas Zero Waste).
There, I found a world of forgotten fabrics —
old saris, discarded cloths, woven histories in color and thread.
Gems, really, just hidden under the label of waste.
And then came the women.
Rural women with sacred skills passed down through generations,
from mothers to daughters,
but with no platform to let their hands speak to the world.
Through self-help groups and NGOs, I found them.
We worked. We bonden. We became friends.
When Bindya told me she was able to buy a fridge for her family through Karma Kouture, I felt goosebumps from head to toe.
That was my yes.
That’s when I knew this had to live.
This is where my energy would go —
even if I still felt unsure of myself.
The Creation
Karma Kouture was never meant to be just a brand.
It became a living circle where love, craftsmanship, and cause meet.
A return to consciousness.
A hope to restore the sacred act of dressing the self,
where every step of the way is beautiful.
Every fabric, every scent, every jewel carries karmic intention —
born once, never repeated.
To dress oneself with truth
is to walk this life beautifully awake.
The Expansion
Then came Scentuality,
rooted in the ancient perfumery traditions of Kannauj —
a small Indian town often called the perfume capital,
where artisans still steam-distil attars by hand
over wood and fire, never in factories.
Supporting them meant more than scent —
it meant protecting a living heritage.
And Treasures,
our jewelry collection created in collaboration with
The Blue House Project,
where women’s creations help raise funds
to send children from lower-caste families to school.
Together, they form one intention:
to create beauty that gives back.
Because what we make
always returns —
in one form or another.
The Reflection
This is my karma.
And my deepest wish
is that its energy may touch and spread:
To more women earning,
To more children learning,
To more love poured into every creation we wear.
Karma Kouture is a creation from my hearth to yours.
To all that it may touch,
Luna
May everything we touch return as love.
