THE art is almost as old as India —where it is called bandhnu. It is as new as the boutiques that blossom along Sunset Strip and Madison Avenue —where it is called tie-dyeing. Knotting cloth and dipping it in dye to produce patterns of colorful blobs, swirls and splotches has suddenly become a bright new fad of both high fashion and low.
The latest version of the fad started among the flower children of California, for whom its appeal is easy to understand. For one thing, it is pure psychedelia. For another, each tie-dyed pattern is unique, an unautomated adventure in personal adornment. And tie-dyeing is cheap. For little added cost, it can turn a 32¢ T shirt into strawberry fields forever, or an old pair of jeans into a tiptoe through the tulips.
The Water Babies. The old new fashion spread rapidly through the rock world; many of its stars now sleep in tie-dyed sheets (Janis Joplin has a set in satin). Pop Singer John Sebastian habitually turns himself out in tie-dye from chin to tennis shoes; he does it all himself, and his stove is usually covered with bubbling dye pots.
Sebastian learned the craft from one of its best-known practitioners on the West Coast, “Tie-Dye Annie.” Dark-haired Ann Thomas, born 33 years ago in New York City, was a copywriter for Capitol Records and worked for an ad agency in Hawaii before dropping out in Haight-Ashbury in 1967. There, at the Free Store, she learned to tie-dye castaway clothes. “It was the only way we had to give them our own individual stamp of identity,” she explains, “as well as making them beautiful.”
Today Annie has graduated to a ramshackle semicommune in the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by the vats, bottles and colors of her Water Baby Dye Works. Most of the works is out of doors —which is almost necessary, because Annie uses lye and sodium hydrosulfite, resulting in fumes that make it necessary for her to cover her hair, wear rubber gloves and an apron, and douse herself thoroughly in vinegar at the end of a dyeing day.
Annie and her partner, an English-born professional designer named Maureen Mubeem, could easily be swamped by commissions from the boutiques of Los Angeles, San Francisco and points between. But the girls avoid commercialization and limit themselves to work for friends at a flat $7.50 per item. A list of their customers reads like Who’s Who in Rock; it includes the Rolling Stones, the cast of The Committee, Cass Elliott and Hair Producer Michael Butler (whose dining room is now being done over completely in Water Baby tie-dye).
Because of the shortage of fine workmanship, Hollywood is hard put to keep up with the tie-dye boom—which has spread to everything from long-John underwear at $10 a set to wall hangings at $500. After Annie, the West Coast tie-dyer most in demand is Artist Bert Bliss, who has been at it for more than 20 years. Bliss, who works with rayon chiffons, cottons and velvets, does his dyeing in the kitchen, like any housewife. And instead of Annie’s concoctions of lye and anilines, he uses a home dyeing product called Rit, right from the supermarket shelf.
Dazzling Variations. So does the Manhattan husband-and-wife team of Will and Eileen Richardson, whose brand-new firm, Up Tied, is considered the best tie-dyer in the city. Up Tied was conceived only last February when Artist Richardson, commissioned to do a display for Rit, rashly announced that he could make better tie-dye samples than the Rit people had supplied him with. They gave him four days to try. The Richardsons set to work frantically to learn—and found tie-dyeing to be both a simple and remarkably creative art.
First step is putting the material together and tying it tightly in variations of five basic shapes, known as rosettes, bunches, gathers, pleats and marblings. String or dental floss can be used to tie it, but elastic is best, as it is not permeated by the dye and can be easily snipped free. The fabric is then immersed in the simmering (not boiling) dye solution and kept there for a length of time that varies with the material; cotton, for instance, soaks up the dye slowly, while silk takes it quickly. Next, the fabric is rinsed in cold water. The process can be repeated as many as five times, using a different color for each dyeing. Shadings of color can be achieved by boiling in a color remover or stretching the fabric on the floor and rubbing on chlorine bleach (which has to be removed in a washing machine). Dazzling variations can be created by twisting the elastic around the bunched material and using a medicine dropper or squeeze bottle to drop the dye into folds and crevices of the cloth.
Limp and Sensuous. When the Richardsons saw how delighted the Rit people were with their four-day efforts, they decided to peddle their designs on their own. One interior decorator who saw the contents of Will Richardson’s sample case suggested that Will drop downstairs and see Halston, the brilliant young milliner and fashion designer. Two hours later, Richardson walked out with a $5,000 order. Halston has designed much of his new collection in Up Tied tie-dyes—even including a group of tie-dyed slouch hats. He loves the medium’s “limp, sensuous quality,” he says. “The beauty of it is that no two pieces are alike and anybody can wear it—young and not so young.”
Halston’s tie-dyed young and not so young include Actress Ali MacGraw, Best-Dresser Babe Paley, Vogue Editor Robin Butler and Model Naomi Sims. Film Star Liza Minnelli has commissioned Halston to dress her in tie-dye for her Waldorf opening next month.
Burlington Industries, sensing a developing market, has included four different tie-dye designs in its fabrics this year, and is mass-producing them. Tie-dye prints are showing up in the fabric centers and even in the hosiery salons of large department stores. Whether they come off the kitchen stove, a rack in a chic boutique or an industrial loom, the bright surprises and flowery amoebae of tie-dyed clothes, cushions and wall coverings will be part of the pattern for 1970.
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