The Colour in the Cloth

The plants behind the natural dye process and why it matters to us.

The indigo dye bath starts with leaves instead of chemicals. The leaves of Indigofera tinctoria are harvested and left to soak in water until they ferment, and the pigment separates out as a paste at the bottom. That paste, mixed with an alkaline solution made from lime or wood ash, becomes the dye bath. This is the same natural indigo dye that gives our Batik Tulis its colour, the deep blue that most people notice first when they see the cloth.

The cloth goes in and comes out looking wrong, a dull yellow-green rather than blue. The blue only arrives as the fabric oxidises in the air, which is why the cloth is dipped again and again, sometimes more than ten times, with each immersion followed by time in the open air for the colour to develop.

The end result will be deep blue & white.

What the colour actually looks like

The colours that come from this process are different from what you see on most clothing racks. Natural dye produces tones that are quieter than synthetic colour, more muted, more earthy, and more varied from piece to piece. The indigo in our cloth runs from a pale grey-blue in lighter pieces to something dense and almost inky in fabric that has been dipped many times. The browns from Tegeran bark have a warmth that synthetic brown rarely achieves. The reds from Kayu Secang lean toward rust and clay rather than the bright, uniform reds of chemical dye.

The person wearing a piece dyed with natural indigo is wearing something no one else has in quite the same shade. Because each batch of plant material varies, and because cloth absorbs dye differently from one length to the next, the colour you have is specific to your piece. What you end up with is a colour that sits differently on cloth than anything produced by synthetic dye, quieter and more specific to that particular piece. People will notice it, but for being subdued and considered rather than for being loud.

At Nyana Nyana, the understated quality of natural dye colour is something we actively work toward. It is one of the reasons we work this way.

The plants we use

Indigo is not the only dye we use. The warm browns and yellows in our pieces come from the bark of Tegeran (Cudrania javanensis), a tree that grows across Java. The red tones come from Kayu Secang (Sappanwood) and kayu bakau (Red Mangrove). Each plant produces a specific range of colour, and the shade you get depends on the cloth, the mordant, the season, and the particular batch of plant material you started with. Two batik pieces dyed in the same vat on the same day will not be identical.

Getting a deep, even indigo requires patience at every stage. The fermentation of the leaves has to be right before the dye bath is even ready. The alkalinity of the solution has to be managed carefully or the colour will not fix properly to the cloth. And the dipping and oxidising cycle, which can take several hours for a single piece, requires someone who can read the colour as it develops and know when it has reached the right depth. This is physical, attentive work, and it cannot be rushed without losing the result.

What this means for the people making it and the people wearing it

Natural dye is gentler on the land, and also on the people who work with it and on the person who eventually wears it.

Synthetic dyes contain compounds, including heavy metals like mercury, lead, and benzene derivatives, that have been linked to respiratory problems and skin conditions in artisans with prolonged exposure. The wastewater from synthetic dyeing carries those compounds into rivers and soil, where they do not break down easily.

Plant-based dye produces different waste. When a natural dye bath is spent, what remains is plant matter and water, and it does not require special disposal. The artisans we work with in rural Java are handling nothing that accumulates in the body over time. The rivers near where they live and work are carrying nothing harmful downstream.

For the wearer, natural dye is gentler on skin, particularly for anyone with sensitivities to synthetic chemical finishes. The colours also behave differently over time. They do not fade in the flat, bleached-out way that synthetic dye does. Instead they develop a patina, a slight softening and shifting of tone that comes from wear and washing, and most people find that the cloth looks better after two years than it did on the day they bought it. That kind of ageing is only possible with a dye that was never trying to be artificially uniform in the first place.

This is part of what I think about when I work with these artisans in Java, and part of what the pieces carry when they arrive in Singapore. For anyone here who cares about artisan fashion and where their clothes come from, the colour is not just a design choice. It is the record of a process that was safe for the person who made it, and that will not leave anything harmful behind.

Further reading

The Citarum River in West Java, one of the world's most documented cases of textile dye pollution, has been covered in depth by Al Jazeera, CNN, and the investigative outlet Undark. For Bangladesh, the Dialogue Earth report covers the ongoing situation in Dhaka's waterways.

Nyana Nyana Eco Collective is at Claymore Connect, 442 Orchard Road, Singapore. Pieces are available in-store and at nyananyana.com.

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