Every YESAET crochet accessory begins the same way — with soil, rain, and patient hands in Burkina Faso, one of West Africa's most storied cotton-growing nations. Long before a stitch is cast, the material itself carries a history worth telling.
We source our cotton yarn through cooperatives certified by the Ethical Fashion Initiative (EFI) — a program of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization. The EFI has worked in Burkina Faso since 2014, building transparent, human-centered supply chains that connect West African producers directly to global fashion markets.
Style is not separate from impact. It is the impact — held in the hands that made it, the land it came from, the woman who wears it.
— HIYWET "MIMI" GIRMA, FOUNDER, YESAET
Certified Organic. Rooted in Responsibility.
The cotton we use is ECOCERT organic certified— grown without pesticides or synthetic chemicals on smallholder farms across Burkina Faso. These farms rely entirely on rainfed cultivation, meaning no irrigation infrastructure, no diverted waterways, and a dramatically reduced water footprint compared to conventional cotton production. The result is soil that remains healthy season after season and communities that avoid the toxic exposure risks that plague conventional cotton farming globally.
45 women artisans work on our crochet ties and belts- Every skein of yarn is hand-spun before being woven or used — a choice that is as environmental as it is intentional. Eliminating machinery at the spinning stage means dramatically lower electricity consumption, and it means the human skill of the artisan is never abstracted out of the cloth.
What "Organic Certified" Actually Means Here
Certification is easy to claim and hard to trace. EFI's framework makes traceability non-negotiable. Producers in Burkina Faso are trained to ECOCERT organic standards and fair-trade certification requirements — covering not only agricultural practices but also sustainable soil fertility management, integrated pest management, and the quality of organic seed cotton itself.
The Women Who Crochet It Into Life
When the yarn arrives in our hands — and in the hands of our artisan cooperative partners — it carries all of that intention forward. YESAET's crochet accessories are made by local women artisans who bring decades of technique and an intuitive relationship to textile that no machine can replicate. The crochet process is slow by nature: each loop is placed deliberately, each pattern built from memory and skill.
This is not incidental. Slowness is the philosophy. At YESAET, we believe that the most durable things are made without hurry — whether we're talking about a cotton plant growing pesticide-free in the Sahel, a cooperative that has spent years earning its certification, or a crochet bag that will outlast a season.
The supply chain is the design.
Why This Cotton, Why This Partnership
There are many places to source cotton. We chose this one because the story doesn't begin at the warehouse — it begins in the field, with a farmer who knows her soil, in a cooperative that tracks every skein, through an initiative that has spent over a decade building the infrastructure for dignified work.
For YESAET, partnering with women-led artisan cooperatives has always been central to what we make. Burkina Faso's organic cotton supply chain through EFI extends that commitment upstream — to the land and the people who cultivate it. When you hold one of our crochet accessories, you are holding something that grew in certified organic West African soil, was spun by hand, and was crocheted by a woman who knows her craft.
That is what Style × Positive Impact means in practice. Not a tagline. A chain of accountable hands.