Once the only blue dye in Europe has been rediscovered in France

On a cloudy day last year, Dennis Lambert retrieved a square of linen from a tall dye vat, squeezed it and hung it on a rack on a wall inside her small studio in this picturesque French village.

“The kids think I'm a lovely witch,” said Lambert, now 73. The fabric reacted to the air, turning from bright yellow to green.

Batch is one of her company's orders, L'Atelier des Bleus Pastel D'Occitanie, most of which are commissioned by fashion designers.

For the past few weeks, the workshop's drying racks were lined with the brand of British designer William Kroll, workwear from a Japanese clothing company, and jeans for tenders. But “You never know what you're trying to do,” she said.

Lambert – tends to wear blue clothes, carrying glasses with blue frames, often finding her hands are blue from dyes – has been rall in color since 1993, when she and her husband Henri purchased a Derelict tanning factory in Lector, a hill town in southwestern France. In the on-site chapel, the pair discovered four 15th century window shutters.

Lambert couldn't find traces of the colour used in horse carts in the 1400s due to insect repellency, and the couple said “they wanted to understand where this blue came from no longer existed. The answer was in the Isatis Tinctoria plant, also known as the woad.

During the Renaissance, once the only blue dye in Europe, during the Renaissance, also known as the blue gold of Toulouse, wood pigments created property in the sun-rich Toulouse region. Over time, however, the plant was replaced by Asian indigo, and subsequent artificial dyes are described as a book on the region's ouds and its history, according to Chantal Almagnac, author of “Le Pastel En Pay de Cocaine.”

“It was much easier to dye with synthetic dyes,” said Armagnac. So “Slowly, my know-how disappeared.”

With the aim of reviving colour, Lambert founded a company called Bleu de Lector in 1994. Using seeds from the archives of the Conservatoire National des Plantes in Millie-la-Folette, France, and a 1813 paper by Napoleon's dye chemist Giovanni Geobert, a five-year project was used using aucucct.

Lambert passed away in 2010 at the age of 55, and the two-year harvest was closed two years later. However, Lambert decided to continue his work, and in 2017 she founded the L'Atelier des Bleus Pastel D'Occitanie. She currently lives in Lumens and works with her 36-year-old daughter, Mariam.

The company's projects include a tablecloth of dyed linen at the Cannes Film Festival, feathers from the 2017 film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Viking dresses that need to be restored at the National Museum of Finland, wooden kitchenware from Japanese companies, and couture works from the runway. (The non-disclosure agreement means that the company cannot identify some of its clients, but their ranks include Nana Aganovic and Ted Lapidus, Lambert said.

In contrast to the luxury items that are often treated by the atelier, the workshop and its tools are rather basic.

The total space illuminated by fluorescent strip lights and concrete floors is only about 380 square feet. Large plastic garbage cans are used as dye bats. Piping pipes fixed to one wall provide a drying rack. Then, one for each Lambert, a long, thin wooden broom handle is used as a dye rod, dragging the fabric out of the depth of the bat.

The dyeing begins with the creation of a so-called “mother solution” prepared with a five-liter plastic jug at the top of the cabinet. (The more attractive, but less practical glass containers on the shelf above are reserved for use when visiting by TV movie crews.

The ingredients include powdered pigments currently purchased from local farmers. Volcanic springs from the Auverges region of France, heated to 70 or 80 degrees Fahrenheit (21-27 degrees Celsius). Diluted ammonia is the latest alternative to male urine, traditionally used to balance the acid and alkaline levels of the mix. Fructose powder to prevent the mixture from oxidizing. The amount of each material used in the mix depends on the desired blue shade and the type of fabric being dyed.

The ingredients are blended by placing the container on a flat surface of a machine called magnetic stir frying, placing the magnet in the container, and running the machine for 25-60 minutes. After the mixture is allowed to rest for 24 hours, it is added to the VAT already filled with cold water.

Everything that was dyed “has to go very delicately,” Lambert said he slowly lowered another Linen Square into the dark green sea of ​​the bat. If the liquid gets too turbulent, air will enter the mixture and turn into an unnecessary blue color, she said. It accepts the alchemy of the process.

She said many factors determine the final color, such as the number of times something penetrates (the dying process involves a minimum of three baths and a maximum of seven baths. During the bath, you squeeze the fabric to remove excess water and air it), time, type of fabric, and even the weather.

“You have bacteria that are alive and you might want to work or you might not want to work,” Lambert said. “It's not a boring day.”

For Robin Khayat, owner of French luxury clothing brand Blanc Bleu, the result is a subtle changing palette that covers much more commercial and standardized colors.

“People can see something different right away,” said Khayat, whose two-year collaboration with Atelier includes a Blanc Bleu signed cable sweater (1,350 euros, or $1,412). “All of a sudden you have these types of blue you've never seen before, and it's just magic.”

Lambert said he worked in seven days week to lectures, workshops, consult with museums such as the Jewish Museum in New York, and to collaborate with universities such as Bok University in Vienna. And she still has many plans, including establishing an international academy to study natural colours.

“I will never stop hoping for the best blue,” Lambert watched the color change from the rack. “What you can get is attractive. It connects to you and you can't get rid of it.”