HOW TO and Shibori in Fashion!

Shibori is a Japanese resist- dyeing technique known to be used from the 8th century.  It uses a number of ways in which the print can be produced through binding, stitching, pleating, folding, painting and twisting. Each method produces very different outcomes. This technique also depends to the properties of the fabrics used. One or more techniques can also be combined.

A Shibori outcome

Designers that have used Shibori recently in their collections:

Stella McCartney

 Fall/Winter 2014’s Stella McCartney dress has an intricate and small pattern of Shibori in the dress. This could have used Shibori stitching methods

Tory Burch

 Tory Burch Spring 2013

Tory Burch used Shibori in her collection in the dresses. Above is a dress in which the middle is blue and the sleeves, collar and going down it has the pattern. The print is well executed to fit the garment shape.

Roberto Cavalli

Just Cavalli Spring 2013. The asymmetric top has only selected amounts of the Shibori dye branching out into stripes across the top. This is one of my favourite pieces and certainly something I would buy!

We did Shibori in the Textiles Workshop and it was exciting to see the range of outcomes. It is something I have never really tried before (including tie dye). It was also inspiring to see everyone else's outcomes and how they did it too. We used Procian dye onto Cotton.

Shibori workshop

 One of the ways I created a pattern was by pleating and folding the fabric and then tieing it with string and adding pegs to resist the tie on certain areas of the fabric.

Outcome

For this sample I pleated and folded the fabric and used pegs to avoid dispersing dyes in this area. I also tied string around the bottom. I left it in the grey dye bath for 4 minutes. The pattern is quite faint, maybe because of the strength of the dye, but I could have tied less string, since a lot of the pattern ended up being white.

In this sample I folded the fabric in two ways and clamped it in between cardboard. I then dipped it in very strong dye for 5 seconds and I pleased with the result, although I could think about refining the print so that the lines are all parallel. Other than that I like the intensity of the yellow and could combine this with another Shibori technique.

Outcome

This method is the basis for our Textiles project and I'm very sure I will be sharing more on it in future blog posts! It's also something I have grown to love and something I never really attempted to try out before!