Indigo - the best of blues

My favourite colour is blue and the best blue is indigo. I love shirts and jeans dyed with this vegetable-based colour. The depth and inkiness of the colour is remarkable. The effect is enhanced by the properties of a vegetable dye - it will fade, through wear, washing and exposure to sunlight. This gives clothes a wonderful lived-in look that is ideal for casual wear. As raw denim and other cotton fabrics soften and flex with wear, they improve in feel as the indigo dye which colours them improves in appearance.

This video is a trailer and therefore frustratingly incomplete. However, it shows something of the colour and its origins.

My thanks to Lewis Thomas of Leith Clothing, whose remarkable Madras cotton shirts are dyed with indigo in Chennai, for drawing my attention to this video. See my post about the shirts here.

BLUE ALCHEMY: Stories of Indigo Trailer from Mary Lance on Vimeo.