Marking 30 years, Good Earth, under founder Anita Lal, celebrates Indian design heritage through luxury that fuses craft, culture, and contemporary living. The brand champions artisans, ethical production, and mindful retail while expanding into skincare rooted in botanicals and Himalayan superfruits.
Since its birth in 1996, Good Earth has been crafting the new-age Indian luxury steeped not just in the heritage of the Indian subcontinent but also in the syncretic cultural influences of the East and West.
This year, the design house clocked in 30 years of creating timeless collectibles that don’t just stay true to the age-old savoir-faire but also suit contemporary tastes and lifestyles. And there’s a lot in the pipeline in terms of retail expansion. Good Earth’s recently launched Gurugram flagship represents an important step in the brand's future vision for experiential retail.
Conceived as a destination rather than a conventional store, it brings together four distinct worlds that reflect different dimensions of living: Earthsong (fragrance, earthenware and gifting), Living (hospitality, entertaining and gathering), Berouj (fashion, beauty and wellbeing), and Verandah (home textiles, furniture and décor).
Additionally, Good Earth is currently undertaking the restoration of its historic Raghuvanshi Mills flagship in Mumbai, a project being led by conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah.
As I connect with Anita over a video call, she sounds upbeat about this significant milestone and takes me through her artistic universe inhabited by culture, history, and time travel.
“I am a Midnight's child. I was born in 48, you can imagine - India was anglicised. Moreover, we were also doubting our own heritage and looking to the West. We still do, as you know, unfortunately,” she recalls.
In the nineties, when stark minimalism and austere Scandinavian aesthetic were having a moment, Anita thought to herself that she must be true to where she comes from. In a stroke of genius, she distilled her vision into a unique design vocabulary that has only enriched and stayed relevant over the decades. “Every designer should actually go into the wellsprings of their own heritage first. Then you go global, because we're also global citizens, so I wouldn't be insular,” she avers.
Exploring heritage with thought, creativity, and restraint, she infused a cornucopia of culture and colours into our living rooms. “We see hues everywhere in India. You just enter an Indian Bazaar; you are hit by the shades that you see. Then the scents, of course, the spices and so on.”
What bothered Lal at the time was the fact that there was very little colour at that time in our designs.
The visionary saw India as a deep, old, long, unbroken civilisation and thought of celebrating this Indianness with her transformative designs. “And in my own small way, we started little, then it grew, and now it's all over. But the whole thing was to celebrate something that nurtured us in all the years and to have a home that has an Indian feel,” she recalls with a hint of pride.
Lal doesn’t see India as one country. “India is a universe, it is eclectic, it picks up from every part of the world we've been influenced by - from the Mughals to even the British. Indians should be proud of our culture and not keep looking to the West to be validated or to keep copying mindlessly what they tell you today is a ‘trend’. That's the one thing I have never done. I've never followed a trend because for me, the narrative is from my lens,” she quips.
Being a curious person, she loves to research. “I love to go deep into everything. So, there was one guiding principle, the name of my company, which is called Good Earth. I thought everything I do must be good for this earth, and it must show the beauty of the planet. So that was one principle. The other was that I've always, from childhood, loved nature, plants, flowers, fragrance, birds, trees,” she shares.
This penchant for flora and fauna, combined with her deep understanding of the Vedas, nourished and informed her creative process. With the Good Earth Heritage Foundation, she works very closely with artisans. “We rescue and empower craftspeople who are on the verge of giving up a craft. When you want to create things embodying quality, you do it with the best craftspeople. Original designs take a lot of time and money to get the colours/blocks right. Then it's copied in a few months. It is a challenge in today's world to try and keep the best of craft going, because the best of craft can never be cheap. I would rather not even sell than to compromise,” she asserts.
Good Earth recently branched into skincare with ITI, which means, as it is, a phrase that informs the core philosophy of the brand. It took Anita and her team eight years to create skincare, extrapolating the power of the botanicals where every product is formulated to support the skin’s natural ability to heal, protect, and glow.
Skin care is something close to Anita’s heart, and she’s been using the same rose water and essential oils for the last 40 years. Eight years ago, she embarked on a mission to launch it commercially. What she loves is the excitement of learning, researching, and then creating something that people actually enjoy using. “And it's taken me a long time.”
She underscores that her skincare is for every age group and demographics – from teenagers to men.
Anita’s next big project revolves around Cheent (Chintz) - a subject she has been deeply researching and reinterpreting. Given India's historic role in shaping the global story of chintz and its influence on decorative arts across the world, it feels like a particularly meaningful project within Good Earth's larger mission of reclaiming and celebrating India's design legacy.