Natural Dyeing Traditions – Visiting Dhuri’s Workshop

During one of my last days in Delhi I went to visit Madhurima Singh, founder of Dhuri in her workshop. I was excited to learn about running a small sustainable fashion label in India, and how she approaches her design process. After working for mainstream fashion companies and one of India’s top designers, Madhurima decided to start her own label made of all natural fibers, and non-harmful dyes. In her workshop just outside of Delhi, she has been experimenting with natural dyes to find creative solutions for using 100% natural dyes in her designs. 

When I got to her studio, there was a marigold dye bath started from the morning. She took me up to the roof to see the garments she dyed in the morning (you can see the pretty yellow that they make in the picture above) and she showed me how she reuses her wastewater in her rooftop garden. Sustainability is factored into every step in her process. The whole garment comes together in her workshop from patternmaking and sewing to natural dyeing and water treatment.

There seems to be a mantra forming in the sustainable business space that “you can’t do it all, pick what you’re passionate about and focus on that.” Madhurima proves that maybe we can do it all, we just need to innovate to make it happen. She has spent time perfecting her process and her brand to make high-quality garments that are friendly to the environment and reasonably priced. Granted it’s small batch production, but isn’t that they way sustainable fashion should be?

She took me through her natural dyeing process and how she incorporates sustainability into each step. For the marigold dye bath she had started the morning I visited, Madhurima begins with leftover flowers from nearby temple offerings that would otherwise be thrown out. Each batch of flowers is used until the color is exhausted, this means using the same flowers for several dye baths until there’s no more color in the petals.

She has experimented with different combinations of fabrics, dyes and mordants to maintain consistency and steadfast colors in production. Natural dyes are known for fading in the sunlight, something she fights with using haritaki in her mordant process. A binder sits in her natural dyeing workshop with all the combinations on different fabrics as a reference.

Beyond her natural dyeing workshop and sustainable practices, Madhurima also works with local women’s empowerment training centers and innovates new techniques. The women in the training centers are working now to make products out of fabric waste from Madhurima’s production. She also shared a new technique she’s testing out to screen print using natural dyes. The issue is finding the right binding agent, and she seems to have found a good one for keeping the color from bleeding outside the print. It was inspiring to see how fastidious Madhurima is in her approach to sustainability, and how she’s motivated to find solutions to the problems she faces along the way.

Dhuri is part of a growing sustainable fashion movement in India. We had connected through an Indian sustainable fashion community group on Facebook called SUSS. The group is full of pioneering sustainable fashion brands and supporters. They still face a lot of the same problems as we do here in the US, like explaining to consumers how harmful fast fashion can be on both people and the environment. The inequality in India also poses unique challenges in promoting sustainable fashion, there is only a select class of people who are able to afford to make conscious buying choices. That being said, I’m hopeful that groups like SUSS and holistic businesses like Dhuri are able to shine a light on these issues and push the conversation to the mainstream.

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To learn more about Dhuri and shop their collections, check out their website.