One woman takes it all on her hand to create the exact opposite of fast fashion, writes Aznim Ruhana Md Yusup
IT is perhaps the privilege of modern life that we don’t need to know the details of how things are made or where they come from. To dress up, a person doesn’t need to know how to grow cotton or make silk, or how to cut fabric and sew together pieces of cloth.
With money, we outsource the knowledge to others the same way other people outsource our knowledge and functions, each of us small but not insignificant links in the vast connectedness of human society.
But this detachment creates people in bubbles – we have no idea, interest or appreciation of the manner in which things are made, or the individuals who make them. Unless one starts wondering and asking questions, which could open up completely new worlds.
One such person was Ummi Kalthum Junid, 32. She quit her job at a multinational company several months ago to focus on her brand Dunia Motif, which does hand-drawn batik canting and natural dyes. It’s essentially a one-woman show and short of growing cotton and weaving the fibres, she does everything from scratch.
TAKE IT SLOW
Ummi’s ethos is slow fashion. From the heart-breaking Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh in 2013 that killed 1,134 garment workers to the devaluation of Malaysia’s batik craftsmanship, she’s distressed by the state of modern fashion consumerism that is fixated on mass production and instant gratification.
“Four years ago when I was working at Limkokwing University, I was sent to Sierra Leone and that’s where I started to see the beauty of batik,” she says.
“Batik is not a design but a technique so you have African batik, Indian batik, Japanese and even Mexican batik.”
That was the beginning of Dunia Motif. She makes and uses natural dyes to fulfil a need to be involved in the entire process. She started with eucalyptus and cabbage leaves, before exploring local and native ingredients such as indigo, ketapang and mango leaves.
She also learnt to extract pigments from hibiscus and roselle flowers, as well as the skin of mangosteen and jelawe fruits and bark of the mahogany tree. Colours extracted from leaves are more pronounced and can last longer while flowers give off softer shades that are quicker to fade.
She experimented with different mordant, which can be any substance that will fix the pigment to the fabric so that the colour doesn’t run. While indigo doesn’t require mordant, other dyes react differently to different mordant, creating some interesting results.
“Mangosteen skin gives off a light brown colour. When iron salt is used as mordant, the colour turns grey,” Ummi explains.
Yellow comes from ketapang leaves and is fixed with vinegar mordant. Mahogany dye with vinegar as its mordant creates a dark shade of brown that gets even darker with limewater (calcium hydroxide) and becomes almost black with rust water.
Natural fibres such as cotton and linen work best for dyeing. Other factors that affect shade and colour intensity include the number of times the fabric is dipped in the dye and how long it is soaked in the solution.
Meanwhile, some colours like green or purple are achieved by dipping dried dyed fabric into another dye. So there are many variables, which explains the widespread use of synthetic dyes that are less complicated. Even jeans, which are famously indigo-coloured, mostly use chemical dyes these days.
“People pointed out that Dunia Motif is a business so it needs to make money, and how can I make money by doing something so slow and laborious? But that’s what I meant by slow fashion. The point is to eliminate or reduce the mass production of clothes and the waste that comes from it. I want to help people understand what it is that they wear,” she says.
Ummi has been making her Hari Raya outfits the past three years, colouring the fabric and sewing the garment. She’s getting married this year and she’s making her own wedding ensemble. Even though she doesn’t like sewing, she perseveres and finds the satisfaction unparalleled.
SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION
Dunia Motif is Ummi’s labour of love. To help pay her bills, she takes freelance jobs in graphic design. Her holidays are to places like Semarang, Indonesia, to meet and learn from people involved in the indigo-making process. She holds private classes on batik and natural dyes, and wants to pursue a Master’s degree in this field.
Meanwhile, the result of her work can be purchased at Dunia Motif’s shop on Etsy.com. The shawls, bandana and tote bags are made from organic cotton, and combines both her hand-drawn batik artwork and the indigo dye that she makes herself.
“I find making batik therapeutic,” says Ummi. “I used to doodle a lot so I’d draw on paper, wood — any material I can get my hands on. Nowadays with the canting, I’d spend a few hours every night drawing wax onto fabric.
“With the waves and geometric patterns, the batik is a reflection of my personal style. I don’t want to copy traditional batik motifs because I’ve not learnt the meaning and significance of those patterns. I need to understand that first before I apply it to my work.”
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR
“INDIGO is a magical plant,” says Ummi. “You can’t make blue colour dye out of anything else but indigo. The only other plant that comes close is bunga telang. But indigo will give you a strong, even colour without needing a mordant to lock in the pigment.”
A member of the bean family, the plant indigofera tinctoria is sown from seed in Ummi’s mum’s backyard in Sungai Buloh, and she chops it all off after three months. To make the dye, she first ties a handful of the compound leaves by its stem, and soaks it in water overnight to ferment.
The fermentation process leaves the liquid with small bubbles and slicks of indigotin oil on the surface. The leaves are then discarded, and the liquid filtered before lime paste is added. She mixes it thoroughly for about half an hour, until blue bubbles appear.
“The bubbles indicate that the indigo pigment has fully combined with lime. You need to let the mixture rest for about two or three days to let the pigments settle to the bottom, creating the indigo paste that you can use for dyeing,” Ummi explains.
The indigo paste can’t be exposed to air, as oxidation will change its colour. In Semarang, Indonesia where Ummi learns to make the dye, the paste is stored in the ground. In her home studio in Petaling Jaya, Ummi keeps the paste in tightly-wrapped plastic.
To use the indigo as dye, the naturally-existing bacteria in the paste have to be woken up. In a fully organic process, the mixture of paste and water is fed with fructose such as raw sugar or banana peel. This takes about a day, leaving the liquid with a faint fruity scent. A faster but non-organic technique uses hydro sulphate, and the indigo is ready after 30 minutes.
“When you dip fabric in indigo dye, it doesn’t turn blue immediately,” says Ummi. “It comes out a yellow-orange shade that turns blue upon exposure to air. To get the colour even and intense, you dip it, dry it and dip again for X number of times until it turns into your desired shade of blue.”
She adds that batik requires a darker indigo to compensate for some colour loss when the fabric is boiled in hot water to remove the wax. This all adds up to the complexity of the product, which she hopes that more people would appreciate.
Ummi doesn’t use gloves when dyeing, leaving her nails and fingers slightly blue even after washing. “I want to feel the texture of things, to massage the fabric to get the pigments inside each weave. It’s a slow process and requires a lot of patience, but I enjoy it.”