All wearing plant-dyed clothes! From left, Kate, Carry & Lottie wearing our gorgeous linen outfits from @annamasonlondon. Carry’s is dyed with daffodils and dandelion, Lottie’s with nettle and dock, Kate’s with madder. Read more on Lottie’s Instagram here.
Fancy wearing a dress coloured sunny yellow by daffodils or a shirt dyed blue with woad? This week we're talking natural dyes and the magic of textiles derived from plants for a special episode produced with Fashion Revolution and guest-hosted by Carry Somers.
Carry's talking with garden designer Lottie Delamain and natural dyes expert Kate Turnbull. Together, they've created a garden for Chelsea Flower Show "to inspire visitors to re-imagine the link between what we can grow and what we wear, showcasing creative possibilities and innovative thinking around how we can use our resources to create more sustainable solutions."
They say: "Throughout history plants have played a fundamental role in fashion – as dye, as fibre and floral motifs, connecting us to a place or culture. In our global world this connection has been lost. Today our clothing is likely to be created using fossil fuels and toxic chemicals, damaging human health and nature’s ecosystems."
We say: we love the power of plants!
CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW (formally known as the Great Spring Show) is a garden show held for five days in May by the Royal Horticultural Society in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in Chelsea, London. Held at Chelsea since 1912, the show is attended by members of the British Royal Family. It’s fancy! But it’s also educational and these days super into sustainability. More here.
Here’s the Fash Rev garden. Pretty and practical! Read more on Carry’s Instagram here.
PROJECT GIVING BACK is a scheme that gives UK charities and other organisations the chance to apply for a fully-funded garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, subject to the usual RHS selection process. This is a unique opportunity for charities to raise awareness and support for their cause at the world’s most famous horticultural event. More here.
LOTTIE DELAMAIN is a contemperary British garden designer. Find her here.
KATE TURNBULL is head teacher at Headington School in Oxford.
#WHATSINMYCLOTHES? Well … let’s just say, most of it aint natural. As Carry outlines: “The fashion industry is currently dominated by synthetic fibres and chemical dyes. Polyester manufacturing is an energy-intensive process, requiring large amounts of water and producing high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, while wastewater emitted from its processing contain volatile substances that can pose a threat to human health. Despite this, the Fashion Transparency Index 2021 found that only a quarter of major brands publish time-bound, measurable targets on reducing the use of textiles deriving from virgin fossil fuels. More than 15,000 chemicals can be used during the textile manufacturing process, from the raw materials through to dyeing and finishing, yet only 30% of brands disclose their commitment to eliminating the use of hazardous chemicals from our clothes. …
Although textiles are the largest source of both primary and secondary microplastics, with around 700,000 microfibres being released in every wash cycle, just 21% of brands explain what they are doing to minimise the shedding of microfibres. ” Via Fashion Revolution.
PLANTS USED FOR DYES in the UK traditionally include:
Woad for blue.
Weld for strong clear yellow
Madder for intense orange, scarlet and plum.
Saint John's wort for gold, maroon and green.
Rhubarb for its fixative qualities.
Sunflowers for deep olive greens.
Hollyhocks for yellow, mahogany and reddish black.
via The Guardian - read the rest here.
Willow Bark, as Lottie says, produces a beautiful dusky pink.
KUTCH from the heartwood of the Acadia tree
CHERRY BLOSSOM branches have been used as dyes for centuries. Threads of Silk and Gold: Ornamental Textiles from Meiji Japan was an exhibition that showed that The Ashmolean, Oxford in 2013. More here - pictured below.
AZO DYES are a large group of synthetic dyestuffs containing one or more nitrogen double bond (azo) groups as its chromophore, first produced by the German chemist Johann Peter Griess in the 1860s.
Kate Turnbull
Yes, you can dye with daffodils! More here.
“I DO WONDER IF THERE WILL COME A TIME WHEN WE CAN NO LONGER AFFORD OUR WASTEFULNESS.” - JOHN STEINBECK
ANNI ALBERS was a German textile artist and printmaker credited with blurring the lines between traditional craft and art. According to Tate Britain, “As a female student at the radical Bauhaus art school, Albers was discouraged from taking up certain classes. She enrolled in the weaving workshop and made textiles her key form of expression. She inspired and was inspired by her artist contemporaries, among them her teacher, Paul Klee, and her husband, Josef Albers.” She loved traditional looms, and took great inspiration from traditional methods, including those from South America. Albers moved to Connecticut, in the US in the 1934. Pictured below, Pasture (1958) by Ani Albers.
WILLIAM MORRIS & HIS CONNECTION TO LEEK Situated on the river Churnet in Staffordshire, England, Leek has a long history of textiles manufacture, starting with silk weaving in the 17th Century, and dyeing in the 18th Century.
THOMAS WARDLE was the son of Joshua Wardle a noted silk dyer in Macclesfield and was born in 1831. Wardle & Co. was founded in 1872 at the Hencroft Works on the banks of the Churnet.
“At first it was a commission dyers until Morris worked at the site with Thomas Wardle, when textile printing was introduced. The company was flexible and organised to accommodate both small-scale orders and large commissions. It converted skeins of yarn and ‘grey’ cloth using natural dyes and hand block-printed patterns.William Morris had 14 designs successfully and continuously printed there while the site was active. Patterns were skilfully transferred to silk, linen, cotton, wool and velveteen using traditional skills which had almost disappeared elsewhere.” Via wardleheritage.org.uk
Want more Morris? Listen to Episodes 144 with JB MacKinnon and 145 with Lyn Slater.
MORDANTS A mordant or dye fixative is a substance used to set dyes on fabrics by forming a coordination complex with the dye, which then attaches to the fabric. It may be used for dyeing fabrics or for intensifying stains in cell or tissue preparations. via Wikipedia.
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