hilkat

While posting feverishly on The Fashion Spot, thanks to one of the mods I stumbled across a thread on tie dying, or to use the Japanese name, Shibori. It’s basically the art of creating prints and images on fabric through stitching, tying and twisting, and can range from basic circle designs and dipped edges through to more complex patterns and markings.

I’ve been thinking for a while it’s time for a bit of home-dye experimentation, and I particularly love all the tie-dye clothes that are around at the moment, so I was rather ecstatic to find the photographs of projects by other people - I always find The Fashion Spot great for inspiration and ideas, and it’s great to see what you can achieve with a bit of dye and some thread, or a particular folding technique.

The SS09 collections were absolutely brimming with tie-dye clothes, from dresses at Anna Sui to sweaters at Michael Kors, all the way through to these pretty amazing boots by Brian Atwood.

I also stumbled across these wonderful tie-dyed jeans from J Brand and Current/Elliot which have given me even more ideas… cheapo jeans from Asda or Matalan + the scissors and some hand dye = a great big mess probably, but a great deal of fun on the way.

I don’t want my tie-dying experiences to be the old ’string-around-some-fabric’ method, the same that you do in year six or seven at school, marvelling at how you can leave an un-dyed mark where the ties were. I want the clashing, popping colours of Matthew Williamson’s ruffled cocktail dress and Anna Sui’s multicoloured silk print dress, combined with the totally random pattern of her halter dress. I want the end result to be a bright, cheerful garment which makes people say, “where did you get that top?

Watch this space….

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 7:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.