Costing

collection 2 - Breif

Create a luxury lounge wear collection which is a unique peices of art for the provided clientele, taking inspiration from Japanese fantasy florals and works of famous visual artist Eva Magil Oliver. The style of prints are scaled up and engineered to only certain parts of the garment. The silhouettes must be fun, comfrotable and breathable. The products developed should be made keeping in mind the brands aesthtics and ideologies. Each peice should be unique and a heritage peice that can be passed on as heirlooms. The initial concept was to use Ayur Vastra as the base fabrics on which the kalamkari techniques focusing of florals prints was to be done. Since in the process of Kalamkari, the fabric goes through several cycles of washes and boiling, it may loose its healing properties makig the ayur fabric completely useless. Hence, this idea was dropped. After several changes and research, the base fabric was later changed to handloom cotton and khadi cotton on which scaled up engineered floral prints inspired from Japanese fanatsy florals was to be hand painted using natural dyes.

For design inspiration the colourful Art Deco foral art works, the Japanese fantasy florals were reffered. Several studies on artworks by artists like Eva Magil, Rachel Newling etc were also done to bring in the modern and chic element to the designs.

initial Concept

the Process

Fig 68: Painting with natural dyes The main process done here was to extract natural dyes from natural dye sources and hand painting them onto bio mordanted fabrics. We followed the same process as that of Kalamkari. Using only natural fibers for the collection like cotton and khadi. This was bleached using cowdung and mordanted with myrobalan and buffalomilk. Myrobalan is an amazing source of natural mordant since it has around 12% of Chebulinic acid. The natural dyes used for paiting were extracted from various parts of plants like roots, stems, barks, leaves, fruits and seeds that may contain colouring matter which can be exploited. Normally natural dyes are extracted from the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits of various plants, dried bodies of certain insects and minerals. Some plants may have more than one colour depending upon which part of the plant one uses. The shade of the colour a plant produces will vary according to time of the year the plant is picked, how it was grown, soil conditions, etc. The minerals in the water used in adye bath can also alter the colour. In this collection it was made sure not to use any animal derived natural dyes. Special care was taken to use only plant derived, vegan and organic dyes.

Classification of dyes

Based on Chemical Structures

• Indigoid dyes: This is perhaps the most important group of natural dyes, obtained from Indigofera tinctoria. • Anthraquinone dyes: Some of the most important red dyes are based on the anthraquinone structure. These dyes are characterised by good fastness to light. They form complexes with metal salts and the resultant metal-complex dyes have good wash fastness. • Alpha-hydroxy-napthoquinones: The most prominent memberof this class of dyes is lawsone or henna, obtained from Lawsonia inermis. • Flavones: Most of the natural yellow colours are hydroxy and methoxy derivatives of flavones and isoflavones. • Dihydropyrans: Closely related to flavones in chemical structure, are substituted dihydropyrans. • Carotenoids: In these the colour is due to the presence of long conjugated double bond. Annatto and saffron are examples of this.

Sources of Colours

Limitations of natural dyes

• Tedious extraction of colouring component from the raw material, low colour value and long dyeing time push the cost of dyeing with natural dyes considerably higher than with synthetic dyes. • The natural colours derived might change their shades with time. In case of sappan wood, prolonged exposure to air converts the colourant brasiline to brasilein, causing a colour change from red to brown. • Some of the natural dyes are fugitive and need a mordant for the enhancement of their fastness properties. Some of the metallic mordants are hazardous. • Color pay-off from natural dyes tend to fade quickly. More so, quality may not be as consistent than what synthetic dyes can deliver. • Another issue with natural dyes is their availability. It can be difficult to produce because the availability of raw materials can vary from season to season, place, and species, whereas synthetic dyes can be produced in laboratories all year round. • While natural dye sources are renewable, sustainability can still be an issue for natural dyes because producing them require vast areas of land.

advantages of natural dyes

• Since they come from natural sources, natural dyes are not harmful to the environment, which makes it so appealing for consumers. Natural dyes are biodegradable and disposing them don’t cause pollution. • Natural dyes are obtained from renewable sources that can be harnessed without imposing harm to the environment. • Some of the natural sources used have healing, antimicrobal, antiseptic porperties, etc. When the fabric is dyed with these materials, their healing properties are infused in the fabric which inturn heals the wearer. • Some natural dyes, such as carmine found in lipsticks, will not cause harm or health problems when ingested. • Natural dyes neither contain harmful chemicals nor carcinogenic components, common to artificial or synthetic dyes. • If you’re going for a soft hue or soothing shade which is in trend now, natural dyes can help you achieve that look.

Concept BOARD

Mood BOARD

Mind Mapping

Motif Exploration

Fig 69: Motif exploration hand drawn Some hand drawn motifs to experiment and find the style and category of motifs we were planning to go ahead with.

Initial hand drawing of the elements gives you a vivid idea of the direction you want to move forward with. Here I incorporated my my style of florals with the style of several visual artits taking inspiration from their work as well as traditional Japanese flowers. Some exploration of stylised flowers and abstract lines, curves and shapes done using water colours.

Here I tried following the mood we were planning to go ahead with, exploring the texture, shades etc

Fig 70: Lines exploration