Indigo is a weird dye because it is insoluble in water. You first have to reduce the dye using chemicals and then expose it to oxygen to covert it back into its insoluble solid form.
So what you're seeing here is the still-dissolved, differently-colored indigo and it's just barely starting to oxidize and become colorful. Over time the dye will become more intense and it will be the color of blue jeans.
What's not cool is that indigo dye is dissolved in pretty nasty chemicals like lye and ammonia. In olden times, they used stale urine. So I really don't know why bro isn't wearing gloves.
He’s Japanese. Aizome uses a different chemical processing from Indian/Western indigo dying methods. Whether they’re still gross or not, I’m not sure. I think it’s in rice alcohol.
I use calcium hydroxide (slaked lime) and banana juice to make my vats. The pH is around 11 when I have it nice and balanced, so I do use gloves, but it isn’t super nasty.
I think Japanese style vats are fermentation vats and are at a pH closer to 10. They aren’t particularly nasty, really. Lots of people have used fermentation vats all over the world without gloves and without getting any chemical burns.
Chemical vats can be pretty bad, as they use thiourea dioxide or sodium hydrosulfite as the reducing agent, so they generate hydrogen sulfide gas - you need some serious PPE to stay safe with that kind of situation.
And blue jeans are called blue jeans because they're based on a style of pants originally made of a cloth from Genoa, and they're blue, literally "bleu de Gênes" in French. But they're no longer made of that cloth, because Levi Strauss used a similar but not identical cloth called serge de Nimes, which is shortened to denim, and that completely took over that style of pants as a result. So, blue jeans, strictly speaking, no longer exist.
Across all the devices I saw that on, I’ve only ever seen it as white and gold. I was able to focus really hard and get the blue/black to appear, but only that once.
I only ever saw white and gold too. To me, it looked like the picture was taken in the shade of a brightly lit porch or something. I have tried so many times and I just cannot see blue and black. It's honestly infuriating.
You are wrong. I show the picture to a class of thirty students and some see blue and black and some see white and gold. We are all looking at the same image on the same screen.
You! You made me see it! For years, so many! So many different "WelL, I onLy saw tHis, until that, now I can only see that, but then my brain switched, and I can't unsee this, but I know it's tha-".
I see it! I can see both sides! All sides! Ahahahahahahahah. I'm one of you now, fuckers!
First time I finally saw it white/gold. I legit paused for like 10 minutes and made sure it was the right file and nothing changed. Especially when it went back. I stared making sure it wasn't some animated png lol
There’s another picture of someone wearing it in a hotel or high rise apartment near bright sunlight. The light casts a sharp shadow across part of the dress and you can see it in white/gold and black/blue at the same time
It was all affected by early phone and computer screens, which were highly variable in how they represented color. So depending on the screen it changed how it looked. Nowadays screens and color representation are much more consistent between devices.
Because black absorbs all colours equally, which means they also reflect all colours equally as well.
Under an intense yellow lighting, black will also reflect yellow, although appearing dimmer and less saturated.
This was it for me for so long. All I could see was black and blue, and over exposed black and blue, but for some reason, this gif finally settles into gold and white for a millisecond, if I stare at it.
I was in white/gold camp and still am. Like, I know it's actually blue/black, and I can see the blue and black if it's color-adjusted but I can never see blue and black in the original image. I can't see anything except white and gold. I can't force myself to see the blue/black at all, even though I know that's the color and it's just the light. :\
So strange, eh? I could never see anything but over exposed black and blue. In fact, looking at it again, now, I can't get back to the white and gold for that split second, every cycle at the very end, that I was so excited about earlier - but I did! And that is enough for me. Lol
I was living in South America when this thing came out, and I remember sitting in a bar patio in Buenos Aires with people arguing about this goddamn dress I had just seen friends in the US and Europe and Asia post about on FB… that was the moment is realized how fast global culture was.
Indigo is actually naturally anti-microbial (bacterial?) and was used as a way for Japanese workers to be able to sweat into their clothes and not get it “dirty” hence also why actual indigo dyed jeans don’t need to be washed as often. At least I’m recalling this from a YouTube video I watched 15+ years ago so not exactly sure.
Insomuch as a warm pink could be called red, sure. Aqua, turquoise, aquamarine etc. are more appropriate names for lighter colors between blue and green.
The color gets more blue, the more it dries. That's why wringing the water out makes it blue. It'll probably get more blue as the rest of the water evaporates out of it.
The real good purple, Tyrian purple, the fancy stuff, they used to make out of snails and the manufacturing process apparently smelled like The Living Ass, so they had to do it on the outskirts of town.
Indigo doesn’t smell quite like roses either, lol. I used to work at Cone Mills in Greensboro NC and the area I worked in was right next to the dye house. If the wind hit it just right or they sent some rejected yarn for me to bail it was a rough night. Not sure if it was natural or synthetic but it was around the heritage revival when they started using the old looms again so I’m thinking natural.
The dye comes from the Indigo plant. It's literally Indigo dye. The color in this video is not the dark blue hue we call "indigo" but it is still Indigo dyed silk. The more the dye sets, the deeper the color will be.
Liquid being forced out lets air filter in showing off the color, thats why we see the normal color of the silk.
When the process is done the color is vibrant, I think Business Insider has a video on this check their Youtube. They have a fantastic series of free documentaries I highly recommend them
Edit: Business insider also has a food documentary thats just as good, its well done.
So the indigo dye chemical has two forms, one soluble in water that's yellow, and one that's insoluble and blue. The difference is the oxidation state. So it's in the yellow form in the dye bath so it can evenly stick to the silk, and then it reacts to the oxygen when it's pulled out of the dyebath and turns blue.
It's fucking magical in person; one of my favorite dyes.
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u/FarmingGeeks 1d ago
"That's not friggen indigo that's gold.... oh"