Most fashion brands start with a product. We started with a question: why does the most visually sophisticated culture on the subcontinent produce some of the most visually generic clothing for the people who grew up in it?
The answer, when you dig into it, is a distribution problem dressed up as a taste problem. It’s not that the heritage isn’t there. The craft traditions are alive. The design vocabulary is extraordinary. The problem is the pipeline from visual culture to wearable clothing - that pipeline doesn’t exist. Or rather, it exists only in two forms: the formal occasion market (weddings, festivals, events) and the tourist souvenir market (elephant prints, screen-printed “Madras” everything). Neither of these is what I wanted to wear on a Tuesday.
The Founding Observation
I grew up in Chennai. I know what a davara-tumbler set looks like. I know the specific color of a Kanjeevaram border. I can spot Pochampally ikat at 20 feet. I grew up surrounded by this visual world - it was completely mundane, completely present, completely unremarkable to me in the way that things you see every day become unremarkable.
Then I went to a boarding school in a different city, and suddenly I was surrounded by people who wore brands that meant something to them. Their wardrobes were legible. They pointed at something. My wardrobe pointed at nothing - or rather, it pointed at a catalog of global averages, the same options available in every H&M in every city in the world.
The dissonance was uncomfortable, but it took me another decade to do something about it.
Why a Club, Not a Brand
The obvious move is to start a brand. Build a supply chain, design a collection, launch it, see what sells. The fashion industry has a template for this, and it’s well-worn.
The problem with the template is that it inverts the relationship that should exist between maker and wearer. The brand decides what gets made. The customer decides whether to buy it, after the investment is already sunk. The feedback is late, expensive, and often misleading because fashion purchases are driven by factors that surveys can’t capture.
What I wanted was a different relationship: one where the people who would wear the clothes were part of deciding what got made. Not focus groups. Not surveys. Something more direct.
The voting model came from thinking about what a record label does for music fans - or what a subscription box does for discovery. There’s a model where the community has genuine influence over what gets produced, and the production happens in response to expressed preference rather than brand intuition.
Why 999
The number is arbitrary in one sense and specific in another. We needed a limit that created genuine exclusivity without being restrictive to the point of exclusion. 999 was the largest number that still felt like a club - a gathering of people who know each other, at least in the sense of shared context - rather than a mailing list.
There’s also a practical reason: a founding cohort of 999 people gives us enough signal on voting to make real decisions. If 200 people vote strongly for a specific design, that’s a meaningful data point. If 12 people do, it isn’t.
The “First Edition Member” framing matters. These are the people who were here when the tree was a sapling. Their member number is their founding position. That has value we want to honor - not just in discounts and early access, but in the permanence of their contribution to what colourtree becomes.
What We’re Not
We’re not trying to “save” heritage crafts. That framing implies the crafts need saving, which implies they’re dying, which is both condescending and often false. The craft traditions we draw from are alive. They don’t need us as their patron. We need them as our source material, and we intend to pay fairly for what we take.
We’re not a “pride” brand. The visual heritage of this region doesn’t need to be wrapped in identity politics to be compelling. The Athangudi tile palette is beautiful independent of any cultural claims. The Kanjeevaram weave structure is extraordinary because of its engineering, not its provenance.
We’re not trying to educate anyone about their own heritage. If you grew up with this stuff, you don’t need us to explain it. If you didn’t, you’ll learn the same way anyone learns anything - by paying attention to things that interest you.
What We Are
A clothing company that takes its design references seriously. A community where the people who wear the clothes have a genuine say in what gets made. A First Edition Member club for people who grew up in a specific visual world and want their wardrobe to reflect it.
The tree has roots. It has branches. It keeps growing. That’s it.
If that’s you, join the club. We’re still in the early days.