Discover the Art of Eco-Printing: Sustainable Fashion with Nature's Imprints

Time of India

18 hours ago

Beej &Co eco-prints leaves and flowers onto sarees
If you've ever pressed a flower inside a book just to see what happens, you already understand the quiet joy behind eco-printing. Now imagine that flower reappearing months later, not between old maths notes, but on a saree that looks like it was dyed by a particularly artistic forest.
That's what eco-printing is about, says Nivetha Viswanathan, co-founder of the studio Arohaa in Madipakkam. 'Eco-printing is basically printing with actual flowers and leaves on a mordanted fabric, which is bundled and steamed for at least an hour. Once it's opened, the prints are right there on the fabric. We treat the fabric with a natural mordant that helps fix the pigment to the cloth. And since it's handcrafted, every time you try to replicate a product it's going to look a bit different,' says Nivetha.
Designer Bijoya Halder of West Bengal-based Beej & Co, which will be showcasing at the Crafts Council of India's textile exhibition in Chennai on August 12 and 13, says the unpredictability is part of the charm. 'The outcome of each print depends on countless factors: the type of foliage, the time of year, the moisture in the leaves, and the temperature during steaming.'
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Bijoya says since the plants are seasonal, winter flowers such as marigold are grown in their own kitchen garden.
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'We also use the leaves and pigments from guava, amla and eucalyptus.' In terms of fabric, she says, they use mulberry and tussar silk, all handwoven in villages in West Bengal.
Over at Alice Ganesan, where production takes place in Thiruverkadu, textile designer Swathini Ramesh sees eco-printing as a way to reconnect with lost traditions. 'I understood early on how fast fashion threatens the environment and the artisan community.
We use only indigenous varieties of leaves and flowers found nearby. We also grow our own for eco-printing,' she says.
Swathini works with marigold, cosmos and eucalyptus, but says her favourite is maramalli or Indian cork tree leaves. 'It gives amazing results on different kinds of fabric,' she says.
Kumaraguru Kasinathan, assistant professor in the department of textile design at NIFT Chennai has watched the eco-printing movement evolve both inside and outside the classroom.
While often grouped together, eco-printing and natural dyeing are fundamentally different, he says, the former transfers the literal imprint of leaves or flowers onto fabric, while the latter involves extracting pigments and dyeing the fabric uniformly.
'Eco printing is not an easy process. With commercial dyeing, you can colour 1,000m in two hours. With natural dyeing, it can take 15 days,' he says.
That time commitment, he says, is one of the main reasons more people haven't embraced it — especially when fast fashion costs less.
'From the 1920s to 1960s, natural dyeing wasn't used much because it was a slow process. But later, people discovered mordants — proper fixing agents that help the colour stay fast during washing,' he says. He calls eco-printing both a revival and a global movement. 'It's global because of the shift toward sustainability.
And it's a revival of old craft techniques. The good news is that students today too are showing interest in sustainable fashion.'
It's more durable too than people think, says Swathini. 'The prints are so well penetrated into the fabric, the designs and colours don't fade.'
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