Largest indigo-growing project in Europe bears fruit
Spanish fashion brand Tintoremus will use the CIFF exhibition in Copenhagen (August 5-7) to demonstrate an in-store dyeing service it has developed.
The Madrid-based brand offers jeans, denim dungarees and other garments in its collections. It has begun using natural indigo dyes extracted from plants it grows itself in the production of its denim garments.
Taking this further, it has now opened a Re-Dye corner at its store in the Chueca district of central Madrid, offering customers the chance to re-colour favourite garments using a range of natural dyes, including indigo.
Customers can reserve a slot and watch as Tintoremus technicians re-dye their clothes by hand. The garments then go through a drying process before customers can return to collect them.
Tintoremus is a start-up brand, co-founded by Lola López and Clemente Cebrián, who also work together on mainstream fashion brand El Ganso.
They are growing indigo plants on a farm in Santa María de las Lomas, in the Extremadura region in the west of Spain. The indigo plants are resistant to intense heat and are growing well on land that used to produce tobacco.
Lola López has explained that Tintoremus’s idea is to re-establish a connection between clothing production and the land. “We believe this is a good way of offering added value,” she said, “to the textile sector and to agriculture. But we have had to be patient and learn as we go. We have realised how dependent we are on the people who work the land, and on the weather.”
The result, though, is what she described as the largest indigo cultivation project in Europe, covering around 10 hectares and with more than half a million Persicaria tinctoria plants.
Image: Tintoremus.
