The wonder of woad: from seed to colour

In the wet spring of 2024, Roua Alhalabi of Roua Atelier came to the Fashion Farm in the Netherlands with a glass jar full of woad seeds. A simple idea emerged from conversations about plants, pigments and textile knowledge lost over the centuries: what if we sowed this historic dye plant together here on our farm? Just among the vegetables in the organic garden, next to the beans and spinach.

At that time, we could not have suspected this modest plant would greatly influence one of the most unique and talked-about experiments at the Fashion Farm.

Transformation before your eyes

Standing in front of a field of woad, you see not blue, but dark green leaves. Nothing about the plant reveals that for centuries it was responsible for one of the most beloved colours in textile history: indigo.

For hundreds of years, woad was the main source of blue in Europe. Long before synthetic dyes existed, dye houses used the leaves of this plant to give fabrics their characteristic blue colour. The special pigment appeared everywhere, from workwear to precious textiles.

What makes the woad plant so special is that the colour is not visible in the leaf. The blue is hidden. It is only released through a careful process of harvesting, fermenting, oxidation and preparing a dye bath. Something that looks so ordinary carries something extraordinary within it.

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From plant to pigment

As with flax, I learned that a world of knowledge lies between the raw material and the final result. The woad was sown, cared for and finally harvested by the Fashion Farm team. Not every plant made it. Some were eaten by the caterpillars of the large cabbage white butterfly, while others disappeared during a major slug infestation in the wet spring of 2024.

Under Roua's guidance, the remaining plants were harvested in the summer. She then demonstrated how to extract pigment from the leaves, a process that was common knowledge for centuries but is now practised by very few people. The leaves are processed, the pigment is extracted and prepared in a dye bath that will eventually turn blue. The dye bath must then be stirred daily to keep the colour "alive", which proved to be quite a challenge. The most wonderful moment, however, comes afterwards.

When a fabric is dipped into the dye bath and removed, it is not immediately blue. The colour only begins to develop slowly when the material comes into contact with oxygen. Greenish hues turn blue before your very eyes.

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Renewed collaborations

The Fashion Farm is not just about plants and animals; it is also about people. It is about bringing together knowledge that has often become scattered across different disciplines or lost over time. A special garment came to life in 2024 thanks to a collaboration with Roua Atelier and Reina Ovinge of The Knitwit Stable.

Ovinge has been committed to Dutch wool for years. It is a raw material that is barely used in the Netherlands anymore and is often destroyed as a waste product, despite being a beautiful, strong and characterful material.

This gave rise to a question that perfectly matched our ambition at the Fashion Farm: what happens if we join forces and combine Dutch wool with colour grown on Dutch soil?

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First garment from the Fashion Farm

In the summer of 2024, a design was developed that would later be named Gertrude, after my favourite chicken on the farm. The jumpers were knitted in a limited edition in The Knitwit Stable's mini-factory in Baambrugge, from Dutch wool.

When the knitted jumpers arrived in Welsum in the autumn, a new chapter began. The homemade Dutch indigo was ready. One by one, the jumpers were dipped into the dye bath. The aim was to create a subtle colour gradient that would reveal the different shades of the pigment. What had felt like a calm, artisanal process beforehand turned out to be intensive and hard manual labour. Each jumper required attention, time and repetition. It was precisely in this that something emerged that went beyond making a garment. The process brought a deeper connection with the raw materials, the landscape and the people who had contributed to it.

Gertrude: more than a jumper

When Gertrude was launched in October 2024, many people saw a warm woolly jumper with a special blue colour gradient. This design, however, represented something much bigger. It showed what becomes possible when knowledge, craftsmanship, agriculture and design come closer together. It is valuable to understand again where our materials and colours come from. Its beauty has a different depth, one that is truly moving.

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Colour that knows where it comes from

For centuries, it was self-evident that colour had an origin. That blue began in a leaf. That pigment came from plants, time, knowledge and attention. At the Fashion Farm, we are re-examining what happens when colour is not created in a factory, but in the soil beneath our feet. Here it grows among the crops. It is harvested, processed, dyed and worn.

Just like with so many processes at the Fashion Farm, it all starts with something small enough to fit in the palm of your hand: a seed.

Joline

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