#NaturalDye

Abstract

Natural dyes from plants, insects, and fungi can be used to color yarns and textiles by craftspeople. Craft communities interested in natural dyes are using social media platforms such as Instagram to connect and share knowledge and to generate commerce for their products. #Naturaldye is a documentary film that explores the use of Instagram as a pedagogical, social, commercial, and creative space where dyers foster community and support businesses. Participants in the film discuss what types of information they find essential to articulate while also describing themselves as part of a community of other makers and artists. Theoretically, #Naturaldye is situated at the intersection of the circuit of style-fashion-dress (Kaiser, 2012) and imagined communities (Anderson, 1983). Social media platforms like Instagram enable articulation between fashion, textiles, commerce, and craftspeople where knowledge of natural dyes, dyers, and their work is conveyed to a wider array of individuals that become part of an imagined community through craft.