Fashion is agriculture: dyes.

With textiles being such a dirty industry, how can diverse approaches to developing local natural colour improve not only the effluent, but biodiversity, enterprises and soil health too?

One of the key issues and challenges with the current fast fashion industry, is the dyeing. How can diverse approaches to developing local natural colour improve not only the industry’s effluent, but biodiversity, enterprises and soil health?

Standing with some dyer’s camomile dyed socks next to a patch of dyer’s camomile at the Nature’s Rainbow demo dye plot at Groundswell 2023.

Groundswell is an annual regenerative agriculture festival in Hertfordshire that provides a forum for farmers, growers, or anyone interested in food production and the environment to learn about the theory and practical applications of regenerative farming systems.

This is the third in a series exploring fashion and its connection to agriculture, using the discussions from Groundswell as starting points for some thoughts.

This one considers dyes.

For background to the festival, first read part one of this article series — Fashion is agriculture: wool — and part two — Fashion is agriculture: leather.

The large white lettering of the Groundswell regenerative agriculture festival stood in front of a cornflower meadow.

Groundswell discussion 1 — British plant dyes: Diverse scales and approaches.

Zoe Gilbertson, Babs Behan (Botanical Inks), William Hudson (Hodmedods) and Sophie Holt (Pigment Plant Dyes).

2022 seemed to be the year that textiles and fashion started to be included in these farming conversations, and Groundswell hosted this same discussion on plant dyes as an option for farms to consider. This panel brought together three folk — and a researcher — to highlight their projects that provide inspiration on scale, community and value added products.

Research.

Unfortunately I’d been stuck in a food queue for an hour and so missed the start of this talk (but when you’ve waited so long, food becomes more important). I had missed Zoe’s introduction (which based on the interactions with her over LinkedIn I’m sure were objective and insightful in regards to the necessity for “new” regenerative approaches to colour in fashion and textiles).

Babs had introduced her research project regarding creating dyestuffs from native and invasive species in the South West of England (microfunded by South West England Fibreshed). There isn’t much on this online, so I can’t give you much, but essentially Babs has been foraging the common native and invasive species of the South West to create dyes (to dye yarn with) and inks (for woodblock printing). So far I’ve seen hawthorn, mugwort, gorse, oak leaves, (dead) bracken and blackberry (bramble).

Training.

Sophie introduced her social enterprise; a dye plant farm in South Devon operating as part of the Baddaford Collective offering traineeships to support adults with additional needs into employment. They grow plants for dyestuffs under regenerative organic systems, while also providing horticultural therapy services. They’re a new business and are eager to understand their local impacts, especially as they’re a community interest company.

Utilising 6 x 35 metre beds on a half acre site, they are a seasonal enterprise and would like to grow in terms of offering, but not necessarily in size. They see the scale element in terms of how many folk can be trained, and would like to link with corporates to build traineeships particularly with Equality, Diversity, Inclusion teams. Additionally they would like to build a community dye kitchen so that everyone locally can bring stock together — which also means bigger commissions can be accepted.

Knowledge exchange.

Hodmedods are a well-established farm, focussing on pulses, grains, seeds and flours, in particular those that have been forgotten from British cuisines, such as the fava bean, Black Badger bean and quinoa. One of the co-founders William Hudson came to the panel to introduce his experiments in growing dye plants, specificially to provide inputs from an upcoming fashion brand Jasper — which I can’t find anything about online, so perhaps it’s just too research-oriented right now. Essentially he wants to “get the oil off our backs”, in terms of dependence and part of this involves fibre and fabric production. I took it that this project is about knowledge exchange rather than about supplying raw materials, though Hodmedods have planted 5–10 acres of madder and woad.

The “bioregion” movement came up, where farms can be a small link to a bigger chain; acting locally but supporting global shifts, with there being a second chance for a British fibre industry. William seemed very excited about the possibilities for usually “waste” plant materials like tomato and quinoa stalks. This is in a similar vein to the work of Circular Systems who have been developing tech and machinery to allow farmers on the ground to create added value with their hemp/rice stalks by producing a cellulosic fibre (rather than it being burnt on-farm). I don’t personally feel that we need to get carried away working on “innovative” solutions like what to do with tomato stalks — they make a useful pesticide, can be easily composted — and instead focus on what is actually causing issues (like the burning of straw). Plus this is about fibre not dye, but the drive for a system shift is there.

Commercialisation.

As always there needs to be a conversation regarding commercialisation. On the one hand we need to completely disrupt the system so that no one is even considering scalability and instead keeps everything hyperlocal and is in line with seasonality. But on the other hand, not everyone will want to think like this, or even believes they can afford to do so, so how can we close the gap in the meantime?

Colourfastness is a key challenge with colour from natural sources. You do need a large operation in order to create significant quantities all with pretty much the same quality. There are dye houses doing this — Green Matters Natural Dye Company is one — and yet there are variables with natural colour that cannot be fully controlled, such as climate and weather, soil quality and water pH, before you even consider the textiles or yarn you’re using. For this reason there needs to be a total re-education of what natural colour is. Designers have a rose-tinted view of how lovely it would be to have a naturally dyed collection without fully recognising the communication required between them and their customer, not least the additional time and money inputs required.

This conversation was mostly about the practice of growing plants for natural colour, rather than the infrastructure required, though an audience question did posit to William about the machinery required to process fibre and dyes on a farm-scale. Having experience with a woad trial in Suffolk, there were so many people hours involved in sowing, weeding and on the part of the farmer, tilling the ground and watering throughout the growing season. That’s before any harvest was done. It’s simply slower, and so any farmers getting involved with farm-scale fibre or dyes needs to be aware that a lot will come from knowledge exchange and trialling. And that goes for designers too; if you want natural colour, then you need to build relationships with those landworkers doing these trials to make it easier for you.

Before commercialisation there needs to be a lot of effort in iteration. Experimenting, collaborating, exchanging findings. That’s not usually how business is done i.e. patents, so all involved need to be aware that it takes a village.

1. Babs Behan’s research into native and invasive plant species for dyeing showing four samples [Credit: Instagram]; 2. Pigment Plant Dyes’ site at Baddaford Farm showing coreopsis, Hopi black sunflower and scabious [Credit: Instagram]; 3. British-grown quinoa [Credit: @hodmedods Instagram]; 4. Sowing woad seeds at a farm in Suffolk with the London Urban Textile Commons.

Views from another dyer.

Susan Dye — of Nature’s Rainbow introduced below — attended the session and wrote up honest thoughts for a blog post on the three approaches based on her experience as a grower and dyer. Susan pragmatically identified challenges with each of these, and I thoroughly appreciate her insight. For instance:

• Botanical Inks is for the luxury market, and so the limited woody shades would be about persuasion rather than desire perhaps. The harvesting of woody dye plants requires a lot of hand-intensive labour, despite the materials essentially being free or freely accessible and usually from prunings (so not ecologically destructive).
• Pigment Plant Dyes is combining horticultural therapy with a product and so therein lies a clash. The training and wellbeing needs to come first, but when you’re creating a product then you have a specific timeline and yield to meet in order to continue the therapy side.
• William is driven by excitement and experience in field-scale production and this could be what the dye industry needs to be galvanised. He has been assisted with knowledge from veteran Norfolk woad grower Ian Howard and further collaboration is going to be required.

Susan also identifies that all of these projects are embroiled within a value system. Products made from natural colour aren’t affordable for most, and so awareness needs to build (along with economies of scale) to increase accessibility and therefore bring the cost down. Plus the industry is up against lab-based pigments (still cost prohibitive though). What are we placing value on when it comes to producing natural dyestuffs? We have to think outside of the box that it’s only for colour, and more to do with the ecological benefits.

You can watch the full hour-long discussion on British Plant Dyes on Groundswell’s YouTube Channel.

Groundswell discussion 2 — Demos on growing dye plants from Nature’s Rainbow.

Nature’s Rainbow is led by husband and wife duo Susan Dye and Ashley Walker. They grow dye plants for seed and dyestuffs, as well as run courses. Their demonstration dye plot has been going at the Cherry’s farm for over a full year now (two festivals) and they ran sessions to show visitors the variety of colour from certain plants.

Nature’s Rainbow established a demonstration dye plot on the Groundswell site and gathered folk throughout the festival for a few talks covering growing yellow, red and blue dye plants.

I’m actually going to direct you back to the main blog post on my website for information regarding each dye plant mentioned by Susan and Ashley in their Yellow, Red and Blue talks. There’s no need to copy it all here. But will give you some tidbits for context. Links to further reading on how to grow each plant can be found on the original article too.

1. Sign at the Nature’s Rainbow Groundswell plot explaining reasons for growing dye plants; 2. Dyer’s camomile; 3. Common madder, dyer’s woodruff and Lady’s bedstraw; 4. The dye plot from low down showing Japanese indigo, common madder, dahlia, perennial coreopsis, bushy weld, bushy woad and bushy dyer’s camomile.

Yellow.

• Abundant options but they’re not equal in pigment concentration, colourfastness and lightfastness.
• Some require lots of space, some require lots of care, some are simply weeds or can be foraged from wasteland.
• The majority do require picking by hand, especially flower heads, which is time consuming. This increases the cost of the final dyestuffs and then of course the dyed textile or textile piece.

Images from L-R clockwise: 1. Dyer’s coreopsis; 2. Dyer’s greenweed; 3. Weld; 4. African marigold; 5. Saw wort; 6. Dyer’s camomile [Credit: Nature’s Rainbow]

Red.

• Difficult to source and grow. They require patience and enclosed/managed space.
• Not particularly ornamental so require vision over the long-term.
• Processing can take a while to come to fruition but shades are vibrant and lengthy in terms of fastness.

Images from L-R clockwise: 1. Madder root shown as an example at Groundswell; 2. Common madder roots after harvest [Credit: Nature’s Rainbow]; 3. Susan Dye showing examples of textile swatches dyed with madder; 4. Indian madder [Credit: Kew]; 5. Bed of Lady’s bedstraw [Credit: Nature’s Rainbow]; 6. Groundswell dye plot with Common mader, Dyer’s woodruff and Lady’s bedstraw.

Blue.

• There are enough options for your climate and landscape, but you likely need to collaborate in order to efficiently and timely process your crop into a dyestuffs. There seems to be a high enough yield for space required.
• Water conservation could be an issue with the changing climate, though the crop may prefer the sustained heat we now expect (and extends the growing season).
• All types of plants containing indigo pigment require some management and cultivation to help them succeed, though some more than others i.e. Japanese.
• The finished product is really where the revenue lies, so a lot of care and attention is required to ensure good yields and high pigment concentration before harvest.

Images from L-R clockwise: 1. Samples of vintage wool blankets dyed using plant-derived indigo, shown at Groundswell; 2. Woad seeds still on the plant; 3. Chinese woad [Credit: Nature’s Rainbow]; 4. Indigofera arrecta plant in a pot; 5. Susan Dye pointing out the rosettes of the European woad in the Groundswell dye plot; 6. Japanese indigo plants (broad-leafed variety) [Credit: Nature’s Rainbow]

There’s also a bit in the original article about hot extraction of indigo from woad.

Images: Top row from L-R — 1. Woad leaves in a plastic tub; 2. Boiling water is added to the woad leaves in the tub; 3. The leaves break down and water turns green and foamy as the vat cools; 4. An alkali is added and the water aerated to create the oxidation process. Bottom row from L-R: 1. The indigo vat from woad has turned a deep blue and is ready for dyeing; 2. Little jar of dark blue liquid, film still from instruction video [Credit: Nature’s Rainbow]; 3. Pile of used soggy woad leaves; 4. Examples of yarn, one skein showing blue from woad and one skein showing blue from Japanese indigo (unsure which is which!)

There you go, there’s some theoretical and practical insight into growing British dye plants. There are so many dyers, dye plots and general growers experimenting with various plants for dyes. The inclusion of this topic at Groundswell showed that there are serious thoughts to diversifying farm crops, not only for income, but also for benefits to biodiversity, soil health, cover cropping, efficient land use, and alternative therapies.

A lot needs to be done in order to build a suitable network for the wider use of plants for colour in textiles and fashion, though perhaps before that can even be established, there needs to be awareness raised — through smaller research projects and plots as shown above — on how natural colour differs to that of synthetic. Part of this systems shift is indeed consumers (alongside farmers, processors and designers). While natural dyeing is still seen as a hobby craft, perhaps this is what is required for the time being in order to inspire different ways of doing things for all involved.

Read three other articles on this topic:

Regenerative Wool at Groundswell.

Shifting to regenerative systems requires us to address farming.

A visit to Brickpits organic farm.

Additional articles considering bast fibres will follow, along with other leads from the myriad of Groundswell discussions, particularly on soil and biodiversity — and its relation to the fashion system.

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I’m always learning, so if you see any discrepancies in what I’ve written, or have thoughts/comments/feedback otherwise on anything, please do comment or send a message.

Stephanie Steele is the founder of Steele Studio, a space that educates everyday folk on the interconnectedness of our food, fibre and fashion systems through community courses and workshops. As an organic food grower and textiles sustainability specialist, she otherwise writes about art, textiles, plants, running and systems design.