Act naturally

I was overjoyed to travel to Tennessee last autumn, for a story on natural indigo which runs in this month's Wallpaper*.
I wouldn't have been quite so overjoyed had I know that the new fabric would be the last developed and loomed at the historic White Oak plant in Greensboro. Words fail me on that subject right now, so instead here's photo gallery from my trip to the indigo fields, plus a Q&A with Allen Little, who designed that wonderful fabric, used for last season's LVC 1880s repro of a pair of jeans in the Levi's archives named Stumpy.

Tell me about how you developed the new natural indigo fabric.

It was a group development like a lot of our LVC. They typically have a theme, we meet with Paul [O'Neill] and his team to get the flavour. This particular one, was a little different. The 1880s jeans predate the 501, so it is earlier than the 501 fabric. Paul and Stacia [Fink] hand-carried the jeans to me in Greensboro and we had a meet. It’s an unusuall pair of jeans that they call it Stumpy! We laid it out...and looked at the fabric. When they show us something like we can’t [destroy part of] it. We have to look closely, and also go though out own collection of old fabrics so we understand it. From a construciton standpoint we try and go back in time and understand what level of technology existed or did not exist, from the construction, there’s all sort of character caused by problems with lack of technology So we created some yarns to mimic the fabric. This one has a lot of different qualities, there’s the lack of process control, character details, nepping As far as the natural indigo part, we had a source [Linda Bellos] who we met a long time ago … we were happy with the results and it made sense to do it in natural indigo, produced in the USA so here we are again a lot of years later with .

How long did it take to work out?
It took about two months for this fabric.

Does using natural indigo change the dyeing process?
We apply it the same way, the concentration of natural tends to be lower so we have to compenstate for that. But from years to year we evaluate the propertyies, the plants grow some years better than others.. so for us it’s a matter of binding the crop and keeping it [consistent].

How does the natural indigo vary?

We want to make sure we have the whole crop represented. The very first vegetables are typcially young and tender, then less and less so as the season goes . To make sure we don’t have a problem with the dyeing size [there is] proper blending and mixing of the early to the mid to the last harverst. And we have procedures where we are checking the storage and we have procedures for seeing it gets mixed early and doesn’t settle. All thing we don’t have to do with the synthetic.

The natural indigo jeans I’ve worn often look different... but in general the dye seems to sink further into the yarn, is there a reason for that?

I think your basic assumption is correct. Any producer can create an effect, let’s say they don’t like it to penetrate, so you have it chip off easily [like with] some of the Japanese jeans, where it’s on the very surface of the yarn. We have a dyeing methodology [that’s different from] that. But if you do something different along the way, in dyeing or preparation, there are all sorts of things that affect it; how tight the yearns are, temperatures, the acidity of the dye. For natural indigo I think, at least for us, we want to dye it just like it was when natural indigo was used. There was no tweaking of any of the chemistry involved in the dyeing. But [even without tweaking, natural] indigo does wash down different.

I’m full of admiration for this project, which goes right back down to the very beginnings of Levi’s and Cone.
It’s been very exciting. It’s plant-based so it’s much more sustainable and that’s very important for us. It’s part of our heritage... the first ]Cone] fabric was a shuttle fabric. It has its own look for sure, it is a little redder than some but it truly doesn’t look like anything we’ve dyed before. For me.. as a development person, this is the best project you could ever give me, it’s so iconic.

Back to our roots

Look out for the current issue of Wallpaper*, which features my story on natural indigo, being grown once more in the American south after a break of a century or two. I'll update with a Q&A and some more photos in the next few weeks.

Sukumo secrets: Nihon Menpu and Edo Ai

I thought I'd follow up the Nihon Menpu story with a more detailed look at one of the most fascinating aspect of their craft; their Edo Ai denim. the Sugar Cane jeans made with this fabric represent a mind-boggling mix of Japanese and American heritage. 

The Edo period, from 1600 to 1868, is well known in Japanese history; it represented a time of great growth and change, including the establishment of a significant fabrics industry, and the production of indigo - Ai. Nihon Menpu's Edo Ai fabric is dyed using the traditional technique, of natural indigo produced using the Japanese sukumo method. 

Sukumo is very different from the Indian method of extracting indigo. Producution is based primarily on Shikoku Island, just offshore from Okayama. Japanese natural indigo is extracted form the Polygonum tinctorium plant. Seeds are planted in late winter, transpolanted into fields in April, and harvested twicer in the summer. Sukumo is a composting process much like that used for making woad, but doesn't rely in milling the leaves; instead they are shredded, and separated from the stems, then spread into large beds, where they are composted; every few days the huge stack of leaves is sprayed with water and turned overto aid the fermentation or composting process. After around three months, the mass will have solidified and darkened. Traditionally it was pounded up and shaped into balls, named  ai-dama. The resulting dye stuff is more concentrated than that of woad, and would be used to dye many popular indigo items, especially sashiko, the quilted working jackets. 

For more information about natural indigo dyeing, I recommend Jenny Balfour Paul's wonderful book, Indigo.  

Nihon Menpu's Edo Ai indigo is used in a traditional hank dyeing bath, controlled by Koji Nomiya. He hangs the large hanks of fabric onto large hooks, which are lowered into the bath; the forks rotate, twisting the hanks in different directions, so that the indigo is spread evenly onto the yarn; of course, being a manuall controlled process, the indigo is more variegated than a modern rope-dyeing system. In some of the photos here, you can see the yarns look green as they emerge from the bath, then turn blue as the indigo oxidises. 

I'm not certain exactly what Sugar Cane jeans are currently made with Edo Ai indigo; I know my old pair, an approximately 1880s style jean rather like the old Nevada, were priced only slightly higher than their other jeans; a steal, considering the artistry and effort that goes into the dyeing and milling process. 

I've also added some period photos of Nihon Menpu that further emphasise the company's amazing heritage. These shots date from 1917-1920 or so. I believe the looms shown are made by Toyoda, although there's a chance they were manufactured by the British company, Platt Brothers. More on both companies soon…

Koji Nomiya hangs the hanks on the dipping machine.

 The end result:

And, for a heritage overload, here are photos of Nihon Menpu, circa 1918

To Dye For: Indigo, Part 2

Shindigo Space 007: Indigo artwork by Hiroyuki Shindo, of artefacts dyed using the Sukumo technique. From the touring exhibition: Indigo, A Fabric To Dye For, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Joel Chester Fildes.

IN the first part of my discussion with Jenny Balfour-Paul, the author of Indigo, we discussed mainly Woad: the European indigo plant, from which indigo was extracted using a composting method, similar to the Japanese Sukumo technique. From the 18th century, this method of dyeing was supplanted using the much more sophisticated India techniques, via which Indigo was extracted as a cake, usually from the Indigo Tinctofera plant. This cake was more concentrated and easy to transport, and from the 18th Century onwards became the dominant method of indigo production - until, in turn, synthetic indigo took over, from around 1910. 

In each case, these changes in production had profound economic and other effects; this is part of the fascination of this dyestuff, whose history is so intertwined with that of civilisation. And this is just one reason why I'd recommend Jenny's book, which gives many insights into the history of humanity, as well as our clothing. I've repeated the reader offer below. 

I found it interesting when, the other day, you commented how indigo actually strengthens a yarn. 

It does strengthen it - because it sits on top in layers and doesn’t penetrate right into fibre, unlike the dyes that use a mordant.  If you look through a microscope there's a white core in the middle of indigo-dyed fibres.  With some archaeological textile finds, everything will have rotted except the blue-dyed fibres. If you look at, say, at an old Persian carpet, sometimes the blacks have worn right down and the reds have gone flat, whereas the blue wool or silk is still lustrous. 

Miles, designer for Levis Vintage and Made & Crafted asks: when was indigo introduced to the US? What strain was most popular and how long was it grown?
Indigenous indigo was already being used by people of the Ancient civilizations of the Americas – think of the famous ‘Maya blue’ paint, for example, that was made from indigo mixed with a certain white clay (this is an extraordinary story in itself).  But the European colonising powers, by exploiting slave labour, created vast plantation systems from the 16th century and indigo was one of the main commercial plantation products, alongside coffee and sugar. The Spaniards produced good indigo in El Salvador, Guatemala, and southern Mexico, the French in the West Indies and Lower Mississippi. The British first grew indigo in Jamaica but by the 18th century indigo was, with rice, Britain’s main agricultural export from Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  Incidentally, indigo is often found in Caribbean shipwrecks and I have even dyed with indigo that has spent three centuries on the sea bed and it still dyes cotton the same clear colour as blue jeans!

And that was indigofera?

Yes, but mainly the native Indigofera suffruticosa as opposed to the main one used in India which was Indigofera tinctoria.  It’s more complicated than that of course, as seeds were tried out and traded for commerce.  

And did they continue growing it until the early 1900s?

A bit yes.  After the American Revolution in the late 18th century, and Britain’s loss of her American colonies, indigo ceased to be a major crop, but small amounts continued to be produced commercially in South Carolina and Georgia until the Civil War and abolition of slavery in the 1860s.

When Amoskeag were producing a lot of denim for Levi's and others between 1870 and 1915, where would their indigo have come from?

Most likely from India. It was grown in Bengal until 1859, when there was a ‘blue mutiny’ by the farmers (who resented being forced into growing it on their rice lands) and then many of the planters moved north to Bihar because they were so unpopular in Bengal. The French were also producing indigo in various places in the 19th century and Dutch grew much indigo in the Dutch East Indies, especially Java, but the lion's share of the indigo exports until 1900 came from India. But it's incredible how quickly synthetic indigo took over once it was launched on the market at the very end of the 19th century.

In the American plantations, were they producing indigo as cake? Did they use the Indian technique?

Yes they were producing the concentrated cakes that were so ideal for long-distance trade (being low bulk, insoluble, and high value).  The system on American plantations was very much based on Indian methods and there was a lot of industrial espionage. The French in particular developed the most amazing technology for their West Indian plantations: there are pages and pages of prints of engravings illustrating the technology being devised to improve the system. After all, it was such big business then, though people have forgotten that.  The wealth of cities such as Georgetown in South Carolina was based on indigo profits – just as cities like Toulouse and Erfurt grew wealthy on Europe’s woad trade in the Middle Ages.

You've written about the resurgence of natural indigo; can I ask about the last use of woad? I didn't realise it continued in use for military uniforms until comparatively modern times. 

Yes, it was still being used until the early 1930s. Dyeing mills would use woad as an ingredient in vats made with imported indigo (and you could still buy natural Indian indigo at ‘dry-salter’ shops in London in the 1950s) – these vats were said to be better for the hard-wearing serge cloth (which was wool or part woollen) being made for policemen's and colonial uniforms.  Britain’s last woad mill, in the fens of Lincolnshire, closed in 1932 and was demolished in the ‘50s... it would have made a fantastic museum today.  But now there is a woad revival, a man called Ian Howard is growing woad again in the fens. 

Finally, what does the future hold for natural indigo?

I think there are two things: on a smaller scale, I hope all the projects using natural indigo will expand, for many reasons, environmental for one. In places where dyers use synthetic indigo the water can't be reused – whereas when they return to organic indigo dye they can reuse the water, and also use the waste leaves for a rich compost.  So on a smaller, more village scale, I hope many countries will turn back to natural indigo.  

Then if you're talking about producing a billion pairs of jeans annually or whatever today’s figure is, you're never going to grow enough indigo. But you can do it for the top end, and I gather some companies are using non-toxic natural indigo for children's jeans.  If we want to go on wearing indigo-dyed jeans on a vast scale, I think the idea of growing a bacterial, organic indigo in a lab, so we don't have to use nasty chemicals, would be the way to go - or even going the GM way, whatever misgivings one has. Imagine putting an indigo molecule into a weed, then indigo would be everywhere. Would that be a green crop? But one should be able to grow organic indigo in a lab, if that's not a contradiction, and use some sort of vat where you're feeding it with natural sugars and using a natural alkaline -  perhaps we could take that from urine again? That may be some way off, of course - but things do sometimes change quickly. 

Lengths of indigo-dyed cotton hanging in the courtyard at Bayt Muhammad ali Abud, Zabid, Yemen, 1983. Photo: Jenny Balfour-Paul

Reader Offer

Loomstate readers can get hold of Indigo at a discount price, 10% off with free postage in the UK: simply click here and enter the discount code Loomsgate 10. Offer is valid to 10 July, while stocks last, and is not available with any other promotion. 

Indigo : an interview with Jenny Balfour-Paul

Indigo, Jenny Balfour-Paul's landmark work on the history of this magical dye, has finally been republished. I've been obsessed with this book for many years - for it tells the story, not just of a dye, or of fabrics, but of humanity itself. I'm often asked why the appeal of denim is so pervasive - yet our love affair with this fabric is a mere dalliance, compared to the enduring influence indigo has exerted on our history. 

There's a huge amount of technical information in Indigo - you'll learn about the different strains, the difference between woad, always popular in Europe, and the various Indigofera plants, as well as the different dyeing methods employed in different cultures. This alone will equip most readers with an entirely new vocabulary. Yet the book is a ripping yarn, too, which takes in the Pharoahs, royalty, slavery, and wars. It is a dye that many have indeed died for. 

I had this book recommended to me years ago, and I'll be forever grateful to those who turned me on to it. If you find any elements of this modest blog interesting, you owe it to yourself to buy this book. Scroll to the bottom for details of a Reader Offer.

I was overjoyed, therefore, to track down Jenny Balfour-Paul for an interview on Loomstate. This is a Q&A so dense with history, that I've split it into two parts - the second half will follow within a week. 

I was re-reading the book and there’s such a wealth of cultural information - the story of indigo parallels the story of humanity. So, firstly, I have to ask – what's the oldest piece of indigo-dyed fabric you've seen, or handled?

It’s a linen Egyptian mummy wrapping in the British museum collection, and it’s over four thousand years old.  Other ancient dyes such as madder wouldn't dye linen. They are making new discoveries in China, where, for example, they've found mummies of Urumchi wrapped in cloth dyed with indigo, but I haven't seen those.  So exciting research is on-going.  Indigo was also used on Peruvian mummy wrappings – I saw some very old Peruvian cloth in Peru, although not as old as the pieces in the British museum. 

What was the source for that Egyptian indigo?

Ah, that's a good question. The theory, because of the translations of the papyri – and it's so difficult with translations – is that they were growing woad in northern Egypt.  But it can't be proved. That’s the curious things about Indigo - when you've archaeological textiles, all you get on them are the blue indigo molecules and the source could have been any of the indigo plants, including woad, because the indigo molecule is identical from all the indigo sources.  This is why it’s irritating hearing, for example, French dyers trying to say woad blue is different from indigo blue.

You've seen a road map - but have you seen a woad map?  

Tell me about the alchemical magic of indigo.

One of the elements of the magic is that is you can't really explain it. When I was writing the book, I thought of all the different strands and how they are all interwoven so that the the mystique accretes. Then there's the actual physical magic of using this transforming dye. It's unique out of all natural dyes, chemically-speaking. 

All the other dyes are the colours that show in the raw; you use a mordant and boil them up, and if, for example, it’s madder or morinda, you see the red, and it’s like that for the others.  Indigo is the only one with this unique chemistry - it's in an invisible form in the plant, and needs water and oxygen to turn into the blue dyestuff, but this is insoluble, and you have to remove the oxygen from the dye vat for actual dyeing. This chemistry, with its strange transformations, makes indigo extraordinary to use.  When I first dyed a piece of cloth with indigo, I was surprised by the rather weird looking yellowish green dye in the vat – then I pulled the cloth out of the vat and watched its transformation in the air from greeny-yellow to blue– it really is amazing to see. Because of the knowledge and skill required, indigo dyers were always specialists who guarded their secrets and handed them down the generations of dyers.

Added to that is all the other stuff of course – cultural beliefs, myths and legends and so forth. But I think the mystery all comes down to the strange chemistry.

You have mentioned that a lot of your journey with indigo started with your trip to the Yemen – it seems to have been a formative experience for you?

Totally.  If I hadn't gone there I wouldn't be doing what I am now. I wasn’t intending to be a writer.  Funnily enough, as a child I always wrote but I also wanted to be a painter and a craftsman. My life had gone more into craft, I was doing batiks and teaching dyeing, fabric printing and other things at that stage, but the first trip to Yemen, back in the 1980s, steered me onto that other path of research.

Did you record processes that would have been lost otherwise?

Yes, and I'm not sure if there's anyone left doing it now, possibly just two or three at most. The thing about craft traditions is that they’re taken for granted - you have potters in your village for thousands of years, for example - and then the next generation turns to modern technology and it's all gone.  No one records it at the time because it's mundane. 

Can we talk briefly about the background of Woad? Obviously for Europeans Woad was the principal source of indigo; how was it extracted in the earliest days?

Woad is indeed the European indigo plant. The extraction process was very laborious in the past and was similar to traditional Japanese methods.  Woad made the mediaeval European way worked well with wool, the two went together, but it wasn't strong enough to dye Indian cottons when they reached the markets from the sixteenth century.  It took ages to make woad dye then - leaves were picked and crushed with a roller or cutting wheels, horse drawn usually, then made into rough balls of compost, which were dried on racks and then hammered and watered to make what was known as ‘couched woad’, which was traded to the dye markets in barrels. The Japanese method, still used in Japan today with their own indigo plant, is very similar.  It takes months and you have a form of compost they call ‘sukumo’. It dissolves very well and makes a more gentle vat, but in some respects it's not the most efficient way to produce indigo.  However, in Japan it's a cultural thing going way back in time and  there's no way they would make indigo in a different way, whereas revivals in Europe are now applying fast Indian methods to woad to extract the dyestuff, rather than making traditional compost.

Tell me about the background of fustians... a denim expert friend of mine asks, has JBP seen the exhibit 'il maestro della tela jeans' at the Galerie Canesso in Paris? And what does she think of the paintings of people in what appears to be denim? Is it fustian/fustagno? Wool warp dyed with pastello (woad) with a cotton or linen weft? 

I spoke to the gallery owners and they sent me the catalogue. It's fabulous - and incidentally, the show toured to New York City last year. The painter was painting work clothes in the later 17th century; while other painters around him were painting posh things he was observing local scenes, and poor workers – there's a boy in a jacket with a crust of bread and a woman in a torn apron, and a glimpse of what look like the lower leg of actual jeans, and what they're wearing looks just like denim and indeed it really is. It is an indigo-dyed twill and the painter has even used indigo paint to depict it. So it is effectively denim … they've completely got the look, it could be denim today.  Fascinating.

Portrait of a young boy, in indigo-dyed workwear. Not only does this fabric fade much like today's denim - it even has similar contrasting stitching!

Would you think that is fustian, fustagno? 

What is fustian? Nobody is quite sure, as it goes back so far, possibly to Fustat, the old capital of Egypt, which may have given it its name... fustian can be many different fabrics it seems, but they all seem to be hard-wearing. 

Would the Maestro fabric have been dyed with woad?


At that period, probably, although he was painting in the transition period with the more concentrated imported indigo from the east increasingly being used by the dyers so it’s impossible to be sure. 

Indigo could dye ‘royal blue’ silks but was also a practical colour to use for work wear. In some places such as the  Arab world, indigo was considered a practical dark substance, rather than a blue colour,  They would dye clothing as dark as possible, using indigo (sometimes mixed with other dyes) to make a good near-black, knowing that other organic dyes used for blacks were based on tannic acid and therefore bad for the fibres. 

 Part 2 of this Q&A will follow soon!

Many thanks to Jenny Balfour-Paul for sharing her insights. All photos here are taken from Indigo, copyright controlled by JBP and are not to be used without permission. 

Reader Offer

Loomstate readers can get hold of Indigo at a discount price, 10% off with free postage in the UK: simply click here and enter the discount code Loomsgate 10. Offer is valid to 10 July, while stocks last, and is not available with any other promotion. 

The many political hues of Indigo

Mary Lance's new film on the history of Indigo, Blue Alchemy, is an intriguing work on many levels, some expected - and some surprising.

It was perhaps inevitable that, with a consultant like Jenny Balfour-Paul, author of the landmark (and recently republished) Indigo, it would be a fascinating examination of the diverse forms and techniques associated with indigo - there are many insights into the history of this fascinating dye, and throughout there's a wonder at its strange alchemy, of how a liquid that's a yellowy-green colour can turn fabrics, especially cotton, blue. The insights into the intricacies of indigo, how its use developed in different continents, and the way its heritage varies across the globe, are manifold. Throughout the film, there's an engaging focus on people, and how indigo permeates their lives, such as the wonderful Hiroyuki Shindo, who maintains the tradition of Sukumo, the composted leaves of  Polygonum Tinctorum, using this ancient Japanese technique to create beautiful, serene artworks.

 Hiroyuki Shindo - an exponent of the Sukumo, the traditional Japanese technique of making an indigo compost  (European woad dyers used a similar technique). Photo by Mary Lance.

The contrasting, more sophisticated technique, perfected in India, using the Indigofera Tinctorum plant. This produced an indigo "cake' that was easily transportable. These methods were copied (perhaps via industrial espionage) in Jamaica and South Carolina. Photo by Mary Lance.

Yet the fact that struck me most forcefully is that indigo is a political subject, which inevitably reflects the power structures of the world around it. This is an issue which surfaces in Jenny's book, where she discusses the dye's early history alongside that of Tyrian Purple - the colour that was the symbol of power and affluence in the Roman Empire; the history of indigo similarly stretches right back, to the second millennium BC, when it was used to colour the pharoahs' clothing. The political resonance of indigo intensified once dyeing techniques reached Europe in the 1500s. The dye was so prized that, from the 1700s onwards, huge tracts of Bengal were used to farm Indigofera Tinctoria; the East India Company and their planters coerced workers to convert their land use from food to the lucrative crop, which was used for dyeing both military uniforms and fashionable items like blue satin. The consequent food shortages, along with the meagre wages,  resulted in The Indigo Revolt; a rebellion which many see as the beginnings of non-violent protest, as practised so effectively by Mahatma Gandhi.

As with Sea Island Cotton, and so many of today's fashion items, the popularity of indigo resulted in exploitation and repression; after the Indigo Revolt, indigo culture moved to South Carolina - relying heavily on slave labour. As Lance's film explains, indigo's revival as a craft skill today has required producers in several areas to banish memories of a dark and cruel past.

Yet that dark past didn't recede with the passing of natural indigo. From the 1890s onwards, of course, the advent of synthetic indigo, via a process invented by Adolf von Baeyer, freed many from menial toil. But as Diurmud Jeffries relates in his gripping, but depressing book Hell's Cartell, Baeyer and his company BASF were an integral part of Germany's militaristic revival. By 1915, synthetic indigo had effectively wiped out the natural version, despite the efforts of the British empire. (Even Cone, who started producing denim for Levi's in 1915, are thought to have evaded restrictions on the German product during the First World War, and dyed their denim with synthetic indigo). BASF later became a key member of the IG Farben cartel, using their industrial muscle to bankroll the Nazis, and their huge income from synthetic indigo and other dyes helped fund research for products like synthetic petroleum, to help Hitler achieve his long-fantasied "Autarky" - economic self-sufficiency. When the allies liberated Auschwitz, they found a huge synthetic petroleum plant built by IG Farben, whose directors, according to Jeffries, only avoided the death penalties they deserved thanks to resurgent american anti-Semitism and the advent of the Cold War.

So far, so repressive. But all of human life is there, in the history of indigo. Perhaps the best counter-example to the dark side of the dye comes from the clothing popularised by Giuseppe Garibaldi. For in the Museo Del Risorgimento in Rome there are a pair of blue workpants known as 'Garibaldi's jeans', made from a blue fabric that is possibly a fustian  - cotton fill, probably with a indigo linen warp - or a cotton duck. This style of pants became known, of course, as' Genovesi'. Garibaldi, the "Lion of Liberty", was the first rebel with a cause, albeit in Blue Genes, rather than Blue Jeans.

 When it comes to totalitarianism vs the individual, indigo has historically backed both sides. Happily, Mary Lance's film gives a warming account of its new role, helping to liberate isolated, sometimes troubled communities, fostering the craft ethic in an increasingly industrialised world.

Indigo in London

A quick heads up;

true denim heads will know about Jenny Balfour-Paul, probably the world's foremost expert on the history of indigo. Her definitive book on indigo has recently been republished as Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans.

Blue Alchemy, on which Balfour-Paul was a consultant,  is a movie on the history of indigo, and how people around the globe are reviving it in their various communities. Jenny will be signing books after the screening and there will be a Q&A with director Mary Lance.


Screening is 7 March, 2012 at the Great Hall, City University, St Johns EC1V. There is another screening for students at the London College of Fashion on the 12th. I hope to see you there.

Personally, I've learned huge amount from Jenny's book - it's a landmark in the study of the subject, and I suspect the movie will be the same.

I plan to interview Jenny at the beginning of next week; I'm canvassing for questions, so if there's anything you've always wanted to know about Indigo, email me by clicking on the link on my home website.

Loomstate

 Loomstate fabric is fabric as it comes off the loom. Unsinged, raw, unsanforized, unstabilised, unskewed. For years, this type of fabric has been obscure, almost forgotten. When you wash it, it shrinks, it twists, it gets hairy. It is awkward, ornery stuff, and it fell out of use. Now, I hope, people are starting to love it.

The fabric shown here was spec'd up by me and a certain fabric genius called Ralph Tharpe, for use in a small run of jeans produced by Roy Slaper - you can find more about these, and photos of them around the world, at superfuture (if the site ever gets back up). I'm sure you'll hear more about them here soon, as you will about Cone, the company in North Carolina who made it. Loomstate means that there is no finishing whatsoever to the fabric after it comes off the loom. This is how all denim was produced up to the 1920s, but is unusual today, as even vintage-repro denim tends to have starching or stabilising treatments applied.

This called K87211, and uses a special, Pima yarn for the fill - the white part of the denim that you can see from the inside. This Pima yarn is a resonant, special quantity for fabric fetishists; it is related to Sea Island Cotton, reputedly the finest cotton of all time. The warp yarn, the blue one, was also specially developed, to emulate denim of circa 1915-1920 - tumultuous times in the denim industry, not least because of trade embargos and political upheaval. The warp yarn is dyed with indigo, and by the 1920s, synthetic indigo was fast becoming popular. But synthetic indigo was produced by a German company, and US manufacturers weren't supposed to use it. In 1918, the type of indigo you used was a political decision.

So this loomstate denim already has stories resonating through its warp, and its weft, even before we talk about how it got loomed, and what it got made into. I promise we'll come back to them.