In 1979, off the coast of Oahu, a 43 year old marine biologist unbuckled herself from a submarine 381 metres below the surface and walked the seafloor with nothing tying her to the world above. It is still the deepest untethered walk anyone has taken.
Her name is Sylvia Earle, and she has never really come back up. She has spent more than 7,000 hours underwater. She led the first all women team of aquanauts and became the first woman to serve as chief scientist of NOAA. With her 2009 TED Prize wish she started Mission Blue, which today looks after more than 170 protected places in the ocean she calls Hope Spots.
People call her Her Deepness. For years now, she has worn SukkhaCitta into the rooms that matter most.
“Many of us ask what can I, as one person, do, but history shows us that everything good and bad starts because somebody does something or does not do something.” – Dr. Sylvia Earle
Sylvia often reminds audiences that about half the oxygen in their next breath came from the sea, made by tiny drifting plants most of us will never see.
That water starts on land. When soil is worn out and fed on chemicals, the rain washes what it can't hold into rivers and down to the coast, where it chokes the oxygen out of the sea. Living soil, thick with roots, keeps its water and its nourishment where the plants can use them.
In Java, the Ibus grow cotton and indigo the way their grandmothers grew food, with different crops side by side so each keeps the ground strong for the others. They call it Tumpang Sari. Their dyes come from leaves, bark and roots grown on the same land. The indigo sits in the vat for three weeks, because the colour comes when it comes.
The Ibus have been living by that sentence for generations, starting from the soil.
A seat at the table
Most decisions about land and ocean are made in rooms far from where anything grows. The women who grow our cotton are rarely in those rooms. Their knowledge has always travelled another way, from mother to daughter in the field, one planting season after the next.
Every year, she chose to represent the Ibus' wisdom during the NY Climate Week stage. Beside rainforest defender Farwiza Farhan, and in front of scientists, ministers and students around the world. She re-wears the same statement, her Ocean Indigo Angkasa Blazer that carries the wisdom of regenerative way of life. Wisdom once passed from mothers to daughters in a village now sits at the front of the world for all to learn from.
"No water, no life. No blue, no green."
Dr. Sylvia Earle
Dr. Sylvia Earle in her statement Angkasa Blazer and Angkasa Scarf in Ocean Indigo sharing the stage with conservationist Farwiza Farhan in the Flora Evening Dress.
Every thread behind your SukkhaCitta piece carries this mission. Whoever wears what the Ibus make carries their knowledge into the rooms of their own life: a Monday meeting, a sister's wedding, the long flight home.
Sylvia followed the ocean her whole life, and somewhere along the way it led her to the Ibus. Follow your joy, and see where yours leads.
Discover your most meaningful clothes, and show the world what you stand for.
