After at least 2 billion years out of the spotlight, our latest materials include magma, amorphous carbon crystals, and primordial micro-organisms.
As we continue to look for new and low impact ways to dye clothing, we’ve turned to the colouring tools of early man – minerals, rocks, and soils.
Minerals don’t just tell the story of life on Earth, they also tell the story of colour.
When our solar system settled into its current shape around 4.5 billion years ago, Earth was created by a series of galactic collisions. Tectonic plates began to form. And geological life and biological life fused together to create vast mineral deposits in the Earth’s upper crust.
So when prehistoric man first picked up a prehistoric paintbrush, they turned to the ground around them – using colours created by things like lava, crystallised magma, gram-negative bacteria, and amorphous carbon crystals.
And while we might think of prehistoric man in dark furs and even darker caves, their actual colour palette wouldn’t look out of place on the streets of LA or Stockholm in mid summer.
Instead of using those minerals to paint cave walls, we’re now using them to dye clothing.
Going back to the early colour palette of early man doesn’t just create softer colours, it also creates softer clothes. Because every piece in the range is garment dyed in minerals, it only requires heat, time and pressure to get the colour to stick, rather than chemicals.
Today we work with everything from volcanic soils, 3 billion-year-old minerals like hematite, sodalite, limonite and celadonite, as well as early man’s favourite colouring crayon – ochre.