giving old clothes new life, with color.
for when this season's white midi skirt goes gray.
It’s the start of a new season, which means that my newsletter and social feeds are filled to brimming with pieces extolling the various “it” items needed for getting dressed right now. In New York, and maybe other places, one such item is a mid-length white skirt. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, squint and picture Kirsten Larsen’s petticoat or Samantha Parkington’s pantaloons. One century’s underwear is another century’s outerwear. Vintage versions of this particular trend abound, so there’s no need to buy new if you don’t want to, but the abundance of billowy white skirts skimming subway stairs and my own white-skirted perching on pigeon-pooped park benches has me thinking about the eventual aftermath of all this crisp white fabric.
What’s going to happen when these white skirts turn dingy or the trend winds shift? Will the so-called fashion girlies ditch them with the rest of their summer wardrobe—heaven help us—or will they turn to dye to give their old duds new life? Maybe together they’ll strip to their underwear and turn their tired whites blue with burbling indigo! Maybe apartment kitchens will play host to bubbling pots of turmeric that turn skirts golden along with fingernails! Going in on a dye bath with friends is a smart thing to do! Less waste, less effort, more fun! Dyeing resources abound in books and in blogs!
Happily, a one-hundred percent DIY route isn’t the only option here. There’s another route that might be more feasible for the average person, will spare a rental bathtub turning blue, and will definitely take out some of the guesswork: send-away and drop-off community dye vats. These vats are what they sound like, communal vats of dye where a whole bunch of individual people can process their clothes together, ensuring that there’s less waste in terms of water and dye, and abundant refreshing in terms of clothing. Who’s going to alert the presses?
If you’re tempted to dye something you already own, there are a few things to keep in mind: It’s true and worth noting that over-dyeing, especially with natural dyes, doesn’t usually truly cover existing stains. Indeed, certain types of stains—protein stains like breast milk and other bodily fluids, for instance—might hold faster to the newly introduced color than to the unstained fibers around them because the stain acts as a mordant fixing the dye to the fabric. It’s also worth noting that the material composition of an article of clothing will affect how well a dye takes. Synthetic fibers tend to hold on to the color from a natural dye bath less well than a natural fiber like linen or cotton or wool or silk would, and each of those natural fibers will react differently to the very same dye bath. If you’re starting with a dyed garment, the resulting color will be much more of a mystery than if you’re starting with something undyed or white. Generally, a healthy expectation of variation across different items of clothing would be wise. Your polybend white t-shirt with underarm stains, in other words, isn’t the best candidate for plunging into a natural dye bath and expecting a miracle, but a white linen frock or cotton pillowcase gone dingy could well be!
If you’re interested in taking the plunge (pun intended, duh), here are a few community dye options to consider. Feel free to add others you know of in the comments: