Washing100% cotton
The colour
will move.
These were dyed in an open vat and printed with ink on wood. Nothing about that is fixed the way a factory finish is fixed. Wash them like that is true, and they will keep going for years — they just will not stay exactly the colour you bought.
DNA · DA & AL
100% cotton · Hand made in Nepal
- Hand wash cold
- No bleach
- Do not tumble
- Line dry, shade
- Warm iron, reverse
“Grown from the Earth”
Five
rules
If you only remember one, remember the first one.
-
01
Wash the first one alone
The first wash carries off the loose dye — and there is a lot of it, because the vat was open and nothing was chemically set. Cold water, on its own, no other clothes in the machine or the basin. Expect the water to run brown or green. That is the pair settling, not a fault.
-
02
Cold, by hand, and briefly
Cool water and a mild soap, twenty minutes at most. If you use a machine, put the pair in a mesh bag, choose the coldest delicate cycle you have, and keep the spin low. Hot water shrinks the cotton and lifts the block print off the panel edges.
-
03
No bleach, and no softener
Bleach will take the block print off completely. Fabric softener is the quieter problem — it leaves a film that sits on top of the ink, dulls the print and stops the cotton breathing. Skip both. The stone wash already did the softening.
-
04
Dry in the shade, never in a machine
Hang them out of direct sun — full sun bleaches an open-vat dye faster than anything else you will do to it. A tumble dryer does two things at once: it shrinks the cotton and it cooks the waist and ankle elastic until it stops coming back.
-
05
Iron on the reverse, or not at all
A warm iron on the inside of the leg is fine. Do not put a hot plate directly on the embroidered mushroom, the sun-and-moon patch, or a fresh block print. Honestly, creases suit these — they were crushed into a bale to get here.
What to expect
Fading is
the feature
Around the fifth wash the streaking softens and the panels settle into each other. The block print goes from black to a warm charcoal. Seams that were stiff start to fall. A pair a year old does not look like a pair off the shelf, and it should not.
If a panel gives way at a seam, it can be restitched — it is patchwork, that is what it is for. Send us a photo before you throw anything away.
Ask us anything