Julia | AosC: Karin, do you have a favourite colour?

Karin | VTL : I have many favourite colours, but I was one of those people who preferred blue, which is actually a majority of people. There is a famous Austrian designer who had an exhibition „what's the famous colour of the world?” He interviewed a lot of people and figured out that blue is the most popular colour, followed by red and other tones. I belong to the majority, but nowadays because I work so much with colours I have multiple of favourite ones.

Do you have one particular favourite from the colour palette you produce in your lab?

I think that's always the current colour that we are looking at. I feel bad if I like one colour more than the other, but I am very impressed by dark colours - the darker the better. I am not so much a pastel person, I like strong colours, and that's already amazing if the colour can produce a strong effect on the fibre.

How would you define sustainable colours?

A sustainable colour is a molecule, a chemical compound that doesn't harm the environment in the process of making this colour or dyeing with this colour, it doesn't negatively impact the people who work with the dyeing process nor the people who will wear the coloured fabric.

You listed different stages where the colour is present in the textile production and usage - colour has an impact on people and nature while dyeing, wearing…

…and also in the washing stage, in the point where the resources come from and how they are transformed. You cannot just look at the end product but at the full process of making the colour. And it doesn't start with dyeing the fabric. It starts with creating or manufacturing the colour itself. That's very important to acknowledge all of those stages.

What is sustainable and innovative about the way you produce colours?

We do not manufacture any kind of petrochemical products. Our colours are biologic by nature. Of course there are chemicals used in the process, but the majority of the ingredients and materials used are sourced from nature.

The majority of the industry uses synthetic dyes based on petrochemicals. What is the best scenario that can happen and how long do you think it can take to replace the conventional dyeing process with a bacterial one?

Today, 99% of used dyes and pigments in the textile industry are synthetic. Not all of them are bad, but I think that would already be a remarkable success if we can reduce this number. Natural colours by all kinds of means play a role in the dyes and pigments market. And I think to crack into this large cake it would already be a success. It depends on the other factors - not only how the dyes and pigments markets are growing but also how the textile industry as a whole is responding to what's going on with consumer behaviour, responding to fast fashion and so on. The next milestone is to set a new standard for the clothing labelled as sustainable and ethical to have a natural colour.

Once you told me that people think that chemistry is bad, but you also taught me that you cannot delete the chemistry from the process of colouring textiles. Could you tell me more about how you are working on making this process more sustainable?

I'd like to quote my high-school teacher who nailed it when he said "everything is chemistry”. When you look around, all the material that we use on a daily basis, the medicine that we take, is based on some sort of chemical process and there is some chemical that we inject. And I think that the way the public is using the word “chemistry” shouldn't be detrimental…There are chemicals that are toxic, because they are harmful, that are flammable, and so on but you should distinguish between them, you should not say chemicals are generally bad. Everything is chemistry, also the strawberry flavour in your chocolate bar is a chemical and I think this perception needs to be changed or reminded. I don't agree with this kind of connotation of chemistry. The truth is that of course the industry is producing a lot of chemicals that are dangerous and toxic, and some of them cannot be replaced because there is no alternative. But we should work out what the alternatives are.

Perception of sustainable clothes is still very stereotypical. There is still a strong argument that natural colours are mainly pale, pastel, they fade away and that's connected to the fact it is not possible to fixate them to stay so vivid on the fabric, how is it with bacterial dyes?

It is a matter of time until we develop the right qualities of colours. It's a general misconception that natural colours cannot compete with synthetic dyes. This might have been the issue in the past, but science evolves further in that area. There is a dye house in Vienna where they work with natural colours and they also insist that it is possible to get up to this level. At the very high end of quality we aim to achieve there is a point that you ask yourself - is it really worth it to go this extra mile for a colour improvement? Or to choose a strategy where we can discuss this challenge with the end customer and say this is what a natural colour is. I think that is something that textile companies and fashion brands have shied away from, because they were lifting the standards very high with the visual quality of colours. But then the question is - are they realistic, are they sustainable?

We get involved in this conversation a lot. I know that natural dyers have a very clear opinion on that and they say - now, you cannot measure natural dyes by the same quality parameters as the ones used for synthetic dyes. I am more moderate in this discussion, let's see where they rank, and see how we can use the existing knowledge to improve them, but also let's not forget that with every improvement most likely there comes the more employment of chemicals in the process.

This is where green chemistry comes in, can you tell more about that particular branch of the industry you come from?

Green chemistry is a relatively new field in chemistry that is concerned about multiple aspects of chemistry – meaning that it's not only a question about the end product - is it harmful, yes or not? It looks deeper into both the materials from which the chemical was made and into the process itself. For instance, if the chemical itself is efficient, so are the materials. Green chemistry principles guide you to check the following aspects: If the molecular size is efficient, if any of the side products in the process are helpful, if the process is very intense - requires high temperature, pressure etc. and if it can be replaced. For example, when it comes to choosing the chemical solvents that are used to dissolve compounds and make the right medium for the reaction, you can get more sustainable solvents, or look into a better way of recycling those solvents. These aspects need to be looked at and green chemistry takes a 360 look around this. And also about the disposal of the material, what's happening after usage or while using, there are now the so called 12 principles of green chemistry. I think they are very adequate to look into the dyeing in the textile industry, because they really cover many aspects of all round sustainability of dyes and pigments. They can be used for other things as well, for example how to produce fibres etc. There are also similar certifications that have been built up in the textile business that are circulating around these ideas and I think green chemistry principles present a more wholesome approach to the whole problem. I am also really proud to be a member of the green chemistry platform in Austria which was initiated by the ministry, so it's a great honour that they recognised our business as relevant to this story.

I am curious about the future of the white colour, because of the need for bleaching the raw fibre in order to colour textiles. If you are dyeing with bacteria, do you also need to bleach the fabric before applying colour on it?

We mostly receive fibres that have been bleached by the customers. I am sure there are also other businesses around that are looking into a bleaching process in order to make it more sustainable. Also what I saw - you can sort out the raw fibre by its natural tone, maybe that requires more labour, but it also helps in the process to not select the fibres that are white, but use the darker fibres for working with black clothes.

Last year already a few denim brands released collections of clothes made from un-dyed and unbleached cotton. So that is already happening at the retail, which can give us information about the end-customer readiness for it.

I think and I feel that one of the side-effects of the fashion revolution is to also think about your own creativity, of what to do with your wardrobe and to attempt to create your own design and dare to be different. Since 2017 when I started with the Vienna Textile Lab, I really changed the way I think about fashion a lot, the way I want to be creative with what is hanging in my wardrobe and that it is possible to change and adapt and use something new and to make new clothes out of something else. I think we should do that more often, and realise that it's not always about the convenience of getting your clothes from the shop hanger, but also about really loving your pieces and writing your story with them.

You have mentioned seasonality and being out of fashion, that all comes back to the subject of trends. It's all about what we shall wear or not, and the colours are the ones which communicate newness and trends. I have a feeling that when you work with nature, biology and microbes as you work in VTL, you have a nice opening to escape this trend calendar. What is your viewpoint about relying on trends while creating colours with naturally pigmented bacteria?

We don't, because we have our own trends in the laboratory, depending on which microorganism we are working on. We have learned that there are specialists who consult on colours for the next two years and on what's going to be in. But we are trying to focus on the main colours, so also there is a possibility to mix colours, but of course we cannot follow that. And I think with preference for individualism, this will become less of a topic. It's nice to see what's in fashion at the moment, but in the textile lab we wouldn't be able to follow the current trends. We've seen that there are a lot of movements focusing on going back to organic and natural aesthetics in recent years, and it helped a lot with acceptance of aesthetics of bacterial colours. A lot of people use batik and shibori techniques with dyeing. That really helps the process, we see that the patterns which are circulating more and more are becoming organic and abstract and that helps our colours in that sense.

What else do you think is important to happen in order to embrace sustainable fashion and the aesthetics of natural colours?

Apart from this quality discussion, you also have a discussion of how to wear garments in the future, how to reuse them, repair and even re-dye them. I think this is something that we don't do, we are used to the fact that if there is a hole in the garment we just throw it away and if our t-shirt fades we don't even consider to re-dye it. I think that has to become sexier and to highlight the fact that synthetic dyes also fade away. The industry is experiencing from all corners the need to challenge our consumer behaviour. We can see more business models coming based on this kind of idea and I think they are here to stay.

When you think about stitching, mending, re-dyeing - It seems to require much more effort. Personally, I don't know a lot of people who could help me with re-dyeing my dress, I know I could do it at home somehow. But I also remember when I was a fashion design student and I experimented with dyeing textiles for a collection, I used those synthetic powders at home and that's another domain of expertise and knowledge. So I wonder how we could facilitate this kind of service? You are a colour producer and your customers are fabric producers. What would need to happen or how possible it would be that someone can re-dye clothes with VTL? Do you see it in the future?

We saw in the past that it was quite common to re-dye your clothes. I think indeed you don't find a lot of shops who do that, there are few shops that offer that in contact with industrial applications. I don't think this is our main direction we want to go in, but I learned that in some areas they do it. I think there will also be enough opportunity for re-dyeing, especially when it comes to relying from brighter tones to getting darker. I think that is always easier, as long as you don't imply some sort of bleaching. For instance, if there is a light pink colour and you can re-dye it into strong red, I think it is totally feasible.

Editor notes:

Karin Fleck holds a Ph.D. in Applied Chemistry from the RMIT University, Melbourne Australia. She pursued a career in the oil and energy business before discovering the life of an entrepreneur. In 2017, she founded Vienna Textile Lab - a biotech startup dedicated to creating non-harmful dyes for textiles.