INDIGO- work hard, stay humble.

Indigo, the intense natural blue pigment, having originated in antiquity in India then spreading west, has fascinated me with its intensity and its capacity to produce a magnificent broad range of shades and hues.

From its deepest blue, dyed in time honoured traditional methods, the story of Indigo crosses cultures, stretching from communist China all the way through Africa and onto the Wild West and the ubiquitous industrial denim fabric we all know.
In following the Indigo Route it became clear to me that its uniqueness is the multicultural way in which it has been invariably connected to humble manual labour, as seen in the traditional clothes of factory workers and yet similarly used in tribal garments like those of the Saharan Tuaregs.
My collection entailed experimenting with traditional Indigo dying techniques having translated the hues so closely associated with it, into a new design language expressing the long road this unique pigment has taken from antiquity to the present day.
The project was accompanied by a blog, documenting my experiments with a variety of dying methods in vats overflowing with Indigo, my sources of inspiration and the development of my collection.