#Natural indigo series#

It can take up to two weeks to prepare and ferment a finicky vat of natural indigo dye. But of course, it was more profitable to grow it in the colonies, where labor was cheap, or even free, due to slavery.Ĭompared to other dyes, indigo is exceedingly complex in chemistry and application.

Indican, the chemical source of the indigo dye, is the same no matter which of these plants it comes from, whether indigofera from India, Africa or Central America woad from Europe or polygonum tinctorium from Japan. There are several different types of plants that bear indigo and they grow all over the world, from subtropical to temperate climates in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. It drove trade for more than a millennium, has been worn by kings, peasants and “blue collar” workers alike, and encouraged the colonization of the Global South. As Jenny Balfour-Paul writes in her authoritative and sweeping book Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans, it has a story as rich (and problematic) as any other prized commodity such as silk, tea, cotton, coffee or sugar. Plant indigo has been in use since at least the fourth millennium BC, according to an old piece of dyed cotton cloth found in Peru. Let’s take a closer look at humanity’s favorite blue pigment and find out once and for all: Is plant-based natural indigo superior to fossil-fuel based indigo? And if it is, would it even be possible to bring it back?

#Natural indigo series#

Let’s Settle the Matter: Is Natural Plant-Based Indigo Dye More Sustainable Than Synthetic Indigo?Ĭontinuing our series of mythbusting and clarifying, we now turn our eye toward another essential ingredient for denim: indigo dye.Ĭonscious consumers have a tendency to romanticize the natural stuff that is produced from plants, swooning over its long history of use in traditional and artisan fashion production, while turning up their noses (in theory) at modern synthetic dyes that make churning out millions of $20 fast fashion jeans possible.īut is that sustainable snobbery warranted when it comes to indigo dye? The story of plant-based versus synthetic indigo is a little more complex than that… it’s not so blue and white. Is Natural Indigo More Sustainable than Synthetic?