Ikat and tie-dye have both made a comeback–especially in the world of home decor. While I know many of you associate these patterns with hippies, and 1960s 1970s acid culture, today’s ikat and tie-dyes are fresh, modern and unexpected. I promise!

Wondering where these two prints come from exactly? Both are created using a resist-dyeing method. The word ikat is a Malay (one of the many Indonesian languages) word that means to tie or bind. It’s a traditional fabric weaving and dyeing technique that has existed for hundreds of years, dating back to at least to the pre-Colombian era. Tie-dye is also an ancient dying technique that involves binding, however the main difference is that ikat involves dying before the fabric is actually woven, whereas tie-dying is done with already woven fabric. As a result of the differences in technique, there are variations in the patterns created. 

So, how is it possible for these two ancient techniques to present as fresh and modern? I assure you it is possible.

1. Indigo Tie-Dye Napkin

Image: Furbish Studio

These gorgeous indigo napkins are a perfect example of modern tie-dye for the home. The monochromatic palette elevates the technique and indigo is such an elegant color.

2. Pretty Tie-dye Pillow

Image: Wayfair

Want a fresh and elegant example of updated tie-dye? Perfect to freshen and brighten up the bedroom or living areas, there’s not even a whiff of Haight-Ashbury in this pillow’s light design.

3. Tie-dye Duvet Cover

Image: One Kings Lane

This pretty purple and white tie-dye duvet cover is from Diane Von Furstenberg and it’s very hip and chic, just like her famous wrap dresses.

4. Ikat Sofa

Image: Anthropologie

To incorporate some modern ikat into your home, this two-color ikat sofa can add bit of texture and freshness, and is completely on trend.

5. Ikat Duvet Cover

Image: WestElm

Here’s another duvet option, this one from West Elm, featuring a gorgeous three-color linked ikat pattern.

6. Ikat Curtains

Image: maisonboutique

And for the windows, how about these gray, yellow, white, and chocolate brown window panels? Make a statement and add a playful vibe to your home.

7. Shibori Tie-dye Sheets

Image: riversidetoolanddye

How would you like to climb into these relaxing shibori tie-dye sheets at the end of a long day? I sure would! They are gorgeous and calming.

Top Image: West Elm

Related on Ecosalon:

How to Use 5 Bold Design Patterns to Make Your Home Pop, Gorgeously

Master Bohemian Style for Your Home with DIY Projects

The post 7 Modern Ikat and Tie-dye Home Decor Prints without A Hint of Hippie appeared first on EcoSalon.

With a colorful, eclectic collection made entirely in Los Angeles, Clover Canyon injects New York Fashion Week with a breath of fresh California air.

New York Fashion Week was very black and white and monochrome this time around. This is practical but, let’s face it, we need some color on our lives. This made Clover Canyon‘s presentation at Lincoln Center’s The Box feel even more like a breath of fresh California air. The label’s Spring/Summer 2013 collection was an explostion of bright colors and crazy prints, featuring geometric shapes and paisley mixed with California pop culture icons like muscle cars, soda bottle tops, steering wheels, surfers, highways, mountains, prairie homes and a certain kind of medicinal plant, with a sprinkling of sequins thrown in for good measure.

Launched only last year, Clover Canyon received instant appreciation from fashion editors and buyers and can now be found at major retailers like Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Net-a-Porter and Shopbop. Creative Director Rozae Nichols, who had her own eponymous line for 15 years, has lived her whole life on the west coast. She decided to make local production an important part of the label’s DNA, stating: “Clover Canyon is made in California, and always will be.”

From the label’s atelier, Clover Canyon’s design team works collaboratively on designing the original prints, and hand-engineering them to frame and enhance the body. All garments are designed, patterned, cut and sewn in-house, using an innovative mix of new technology mixed with old world craftsmanship. “I have a wonderful team, a glorious design team,” Nichols tells Harper’s BAZAAR. She goes on to say that the label is able to maintain an accessible price point by “creating an in-house science and precision that we’ve mastered with no waste or excessive burden. The fabrics are humble, they’re not insanely expensive. We make Clover Canyon look expensive because of the artistry.”

Nichols has been focused on prints for a long time, and with Clover Canyon she completely surrenders to them, making it the focus of all the label’s collections so far. “We approached Clover Canyon with a new attitude for print and made a commitment to making it about saturated color,” she says. “Part of the magic is the research we do to make the images very opposite and juxtaposed.”

There’s no doubt that prints are having a fashion moment right now, but Clover Canyon still stands out from the crowd. One is not drawn to these fantastical garments because they happen to be what’s trendy right now, the precise mix of tailoring and placement of the patterns gives this collection a timeless appeal that will surely make it stand the test of time. That, along with the outspoken commitment to local production, is what we really love about them and welcome with open arms.

All photos by Johanna Björk

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VideoA visual match-up of two cities.

First a collection of prints and then a big, Paris vs. New York now goes to video. Any francophile or lover of the Big Apple will appreciate the charm and simplicity of the differences between the two global metropolises captured in this video..

Paris vs New York from TonyMiotto on Vimeo.

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If we are seeing the diversification of fashion production and distribution, and the death of cut and sew, what might the emerging future of fashion look like?

This week I showed a group of my students the sweatshop documentary China Blue as we do every semester. It’s always an eye opener for most of them as they begin to grapple with the realities of our globalized clothing production system. Most are vaguely aware of ideas of sweat shops and poor working or environmental conditions that go toward making the clothing they buy and wear every day so cheap and accessible, but when confronted with the personal stories of boys and girls of a similar or younger age the awareness seems to stick.

The many problems of the fashion industry can be traced to its incredible degree of globalization and a lack of skills at the hands of consumers. We just don’t see the clothing being made anymore, we don’t know how it is made, so most consumers have very little understanding of the time or resources (both human and natural) it takes to design, produce and transport clothing because it is made in a factory, somewhere else and by someone else. Adding to the problem, is that fact that many western countries simply do not have production capabilities with producers closing their doors when imports become too cheap to compete with. Many consumers lack the confidence to mend a garment or modify it to better suit them, so instead buy another. So how might a technology driven re-localization of fashion production solve some of these problems?

Imagine this. You are about to go out on a Friday evening and realize you “have nothing to wear!” You pay $50 to download from the internet that latest Fall 2018 dress design you love, software modifies it to fit exactly and then sends it to your desktop 3D printer, 30 minutes later you’re out the door.

The rise of digital fabrication within industry and our communities, is signaling massive changes ahead in the way we consume and design clothing. Already online hubs for product design and dissemination such as Shapeways and Ponoko are pushing the Etsy model of community driven, small scale production and retail of products to the next level. These firms are enabling designers, users and consumers to generate and modify products and have them manufactured and easily distributed, all from their computers.

The location of design and production is shifting from large scale, mass-sameness to a micro-production, co-designed, distributed production model. The headaches of transportation and having the right products in the hands of consumers when they want them will be solved. The technology needed to turn this dream into a reality is already available; companies such as Solidoodle and Makerbot Industries are putting digital fabrication into our homes, allowing users to print household 3D objects such as door handles, utensils and toys. Makerbot Industries say “Instead of going shopping, MakerBot it!” The current drawback for these tools is the relatively low resolution of their prints and the small scale of the objects they can produce. However, as technology improves, the high resolution and larger scales available to industry will become available to home 3D printers.

Additionally the availability of high-end machinery to the public through open systems such as the Fab Lab, means that the creation of complex, high resolution outputs can also be at the hands of almost anyone, from the skilled amateur in Canada to the community group in Zambia.

Fab Labs have spread from inner-city Boston to rural India, from South Africa to the North of Norway. Activities in fab labs range from technological empowerment to peer-to-peer project-based technical training to local problem-solving to small-scale high-tech business incubation to grass-roots research. Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind-powered turbines, thin-client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.

Apply this scenario to the production and design of clothing and the existing fashion system becomes much more distributed. It would not mean necessarily that the existing model of fashion production and consumption would disappear, more that it would become augmented and accessible to users in ways that we might struggle to foresee. In much the same way that desktop printers and photocopiers changed the way users generated and consumed printed material, making it easier for example, for niche groups to distribute pamphlets and zines to support their own agendas, increased availability of new technologies will further remove control of the fashion system from traditional sites of fashion creation and into the hands of the skilled amateur. Users who cannot pattern-make or sew will be able to easily generate/personalize/manipulate/hack fashion objects or messages through the use of technology made tangible, allowing almost anyone to participate in the local production of fashion.

So what’s happening now? The fantastical Iris Van Herpen and the more accessible Continuum are providing us with contemporary suggestions of what our future might look like. Iris Van Herpen has been pushing the boundaries of 3D printing for fashion creation since her Crystallization and subsequent Escapism collections. She works in collaboration with well-known architects and the leading digital printing company MGX by Materialise, the results of which are some of the most stunning and confronting clothing designs since Alexander McQueen.

While currently these designs are relatively rigid and primarily for the catwalk, as technology improves the availability of new flexible printing materials will change that. An existing application which deals with the rigidity of 3D printing materials in a clever way is supplied by Continuum, who provide their N12 Bikini available on 3D printing site Shapeways, while their online software app allows users to design their own D.dress with a simple click of the mouse. The hybrid of chemistry and fashion in the form of Fabrican allows users to design, create, repair and modify clothing from home with ease, at any time. Rip your pants sitting eating your lunch on a park bench? Pull out your can of Fabrican from your handbag and patch it right then and there. An unexpected cold snap? Spray on some longer sleeves. You arrive at a party to see that someone else is wearing the exact same dress? Duck into the bathroom and modify it.

We can begin to imagine a future where open source software allows everyday users to generate 3D knitted garment design they can send to their local FABLab, while 3D printing their own buttons and closures at home. Fashion designers will sell digital files online for printing through an online digital fabrication hub such as Ponoko, while the more tech savvy users will manipulate these designs to suit their size, climate or taste before the garment is produced down the street from where they live. We can see a future where our everyday tools of clothing maintenance and fashion creation come from a can in our handbag. And imagine this: clothing fibers printed at the molecular level, allowing the raw material to be recycled into new garments when the old design is past its “fashion moment” the ultimate in closed loop design.

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What you should look out for at the thrift shop right now.

To be a successful thrift shopper you need to be able to quickly weed through rows and rows of racks to find those special pieces that will make your friends green with envy. While thrifting requires an open mind, it helps to have a general idea of what you are looking to find. Here’s our tips on things that you should keep an eye out for at the thrift shop right now.

Color

Color is still a major trend we’ll continue to see through spring and summer. Color blocking, brights and pastels are all equally on trend and fairly easy to find in any well-stocked thrift store. The ones that sort their merchandise by color are especially good for scoring colorful finds. Look for solids like burgundy (wear it head-to-toe or match with pale pink), pastels and especially tangerine.

Anoraks & Bomber Jackets
Army/surplus jackets were seen on many runways this season, Jason Wu and Isabel Marant included, and are a great way to toughen up any ensemble. Score extra brownie points if you manage to find one with a Camo print.

Prints & Patterns
The biggest trend this season, without question, is prints. Whether you are mixing patterns to create a head-to-toe print look or using one patterned piece to add contrast to a simple monochrome look – prints will do the trick.

Lace
Valentino’s lace dress from the F/W 2012 collection really brought lace back into the realms of high fashion, and has everyone looking to recreate this hit look. There are currently six magazine covers, among them W and ELLE, featuring this dress. Look for lace tops at the thrift shop to create your own dreamy lace look, in black, white or neutral.

Peplums
When it comes to details, peplums are all the rage right now. If you find one – you’ve hit thrift paydirt! Dig thru the 80s section to find a peplum dress, skirt or jacket (just make sure you remove those inevitable shoulder pads).

Denim

Denim never goes out of style, which is why it’s such a great thing to thrift. When it comes to pants, look for a straight leg boyfriend fit. Denim jackets and vests are also great right now, and make sure you stock up on denim shorts for summer. If you can’t find shorts, just look for jeans that fit well and cut the legs off.

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In homage to mixed tapes, record players and analog youth.

Feeling nostalgic for a simpler time when mixed tapes meant, “I love you?” Maybe these limited edition prints will help. Designed by Aimée Wilder, who sources her inspiration from typography, logo design, illustration, textiles, toy design and rock poster art, each print is signed and numbered.Only 25 are available in each color (they come in earth, denim, sienna, coriander, teal and neon), which are silk-screened onto archival eco-friendly card stock.

Available from Eskayel for $52 each.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

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