Transform your fabrics into five exclusively-designed essential pieces, including a shirt dress and duster coat. Natural dye specialist Babs Behan laughs when asked about her favourite natural dye plant. "Like people, they all have such a beautiful variety of different characteristics," she says. "But, if I had to choose one, indigo stands out. It's not like any other dye. It's not water soluble – so you have to go through this charming, alchemical, almost mystical process, to make it bond with the fibre. Then you take the fabric out of the water and you'll see it turn from green to blue as it oxidises. There's something so special about that because it's the colour of our planet. It's the colour of the sky and the sea – and we can't capture it from anywhere except from this one indigo pigment." Bella: I had the title ‘Grow, Cook, Dye’ in my head and thought ‘what am I going to do with it?’ I was growing vegetables in my allotment and working with natural dyes. And, at the same time, I started making artwork with a client of mine, an artist called Cathie Pilkington. And I just started connecting the dots between growing things and cooking things and dyeing clothing.

Once the fabric is mordanted, it’s ready to be dyed. But there are also modifiers and mixers that come into play. ‘Mixers’ is a term that I’ve coined. I use it to refer to certain traditional dye plants that I incorporate into the dye bath to add color. For example, madder – it can be harvested only three to five years after growing and the roots are used to obtain the dye. Modifiers are interesting because when you dye something, it is very rare to get two identical results. There are so many factors that influence color. One of them is pH level in water – modifiers like lemon help intentionally change the pH level and so a murky brown can become pink. AS: What are the considerations in writing down a dye recipe? Transform your fabrics into five exclusively designed, essential pieces of clothing, including a shirt dress and duster coat Bel: After a degree in fashion design at the Instituto Marangoni, working for threeASFOUR and Alexander Wang in New York, you studied Innovative Pattern Cutting as a postgraduate at Central Saint Martins and gained an MA in Applied Psychology in Fashion at LCF. Tell me about your journey from that point. While turning a plant into a fibre is a complex process, natural dyeing is something that everyone can easily try at home. The garden features dye baths to show just how simple the process can be. “So many people are going away realising they can do this,” Carry Somers, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, says. “These are things they’ve got in their garden; it’s [about] showing people the possibilities that are out there.” Other household textiles like cotton or linen sheets can be upcycled. In Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear: From seed to style the sustainable way, Bella Gonshorovitz shows how to grow and cook five fruits and veg, then create natural fabric dye – even the dressmaking patterns are included.Who’s the author? Bella Gonshorovitz is a prize-winning fashion designer and dressmaker who has worked with Alexander Wang and Gucci. A long-time vegan, Bella is passionate about growing her own food and reducing waste. Her cooking is influenced by the principles of sustainability as well as by the flavours of her Tel Aviv childhood. From sowing to sewing, Bella guides you with engaging stories, easy-to-follow instructions, step-by-step illustrations, and full-scale pattern sheets, as well as: Bel: I agree. Personal action is important. For example, I’m vegan because I don’t want to cause animal suffering. It would actually be quite difficult for me now to eat the body of an animal. Animal suffering and eating meat and dairy are inextricably linked. Likewise, if you know that the clothes you’re buying have been produced in a polluting, extractive, exploitative way, it should be quite difficult to buy them.I also tend to think of consumer responsibility as modelling new ways of living in the future. Because we need to learn to live in these ways now. Plus, in this time of crisis, we have to have everyone - ordinary people, policy makers, brands. So the re-education you talk about is key. In comparison, natural dyeing is a less harmful practice. Given the recent drought, we have to think about our water consumption a lot more, especially as it will become more of a problem in the years to come. AS: You speak about the link between fashion and psychology, in a context to who youbecome on the journey of making your own clothes. Can you elaborate on this?

The first stage is mordanting – borrowing from a French term, mordant helps the dye to bite into the fabric. I recommend alum (aluminum potassium sulfate) which is what the fabric has to be cooked in. Also used in food processing, alum is not poisonous in small quantities and it is a natural mineral. People often forget that not everything that’s natural is safe. Bella: [The book] is for anyone who enjoys doing things with their hands. The book doesn't ask you for expensive ingredients or special knowledge. It's about doing quite a lot with very little, with a real emphasis on upcycling and working with what’s already there, whether that’s an old sheet or tablecloth. Live sustainably with style – grow fruits and vegetables, cook them, create natural dyes, then make your own clothes with five full-size pattern sheets. We have to reconsider our relationship with clothes. Through fast fashion we are bombarded with clothes and they have become disposable. The common phenomena now is that people wear things once and then throw it away, particularly in the UK. I find that baffling. If you went through the journey of making the garment, you would never throw it – you would mend it, pass it along to family and friends, it becomes a part of you and you become a part of it.Over the last couple of workshops I’ve conducted, I used the same pot of water and the same amount of onions, but one created a yellow dye the other olive – It’s an uncontrollable process. A strong part of why I wanted to design in the first place, why I wanted to make clothes, was [to look at] how clothes become memory. I wear things for decades. Even if they don't fit anymore, I find a way to adjust them. I can't let go of things and if something gets lost, I’m devastated. When fast fashion became so big, I was just staggered that people could buy something and then just throw it away. Clothes are imbued with what you had with the garment. During the pandemic, I was making protective gowns for doctors in hospitals since the UK had a shortage. Then the title came to my head – Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear. I made the onion dyed dress from upcycled fabrics for myself, showed it to my agent – who helped me put together a proposal. It took three months for me to get the book down. It became a vehicle for me to share this ideology and everything played out organically.

Introducing Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear– a fully-illustrated guide that explains how to follow a completely sustainable approach to both food and fashion, by combining the two to achieve self-sufficiency in style! Discover the endless benefits of swapping food waste and fast fashion for homegrown produce, delicious vegan dishes alongside a contemporary yet environmentally-friendly wardrobe with the help of fashion designer, dressmaker and author Bella Gonshorovitz. The book also tells my story – because I worked as a designer for big fashion houses around the world and became incredibly disillusioned by the industry. I really wanted to find a way to work that agrees with nature and has less of a societal cost. Bella Gonshorovitz BG: What is to stress is that it’s not an activity that you need to be engaged in the whole day. There is a process of preparing a fabric. If it’s a new fabric from the store, what I call a virgin textile in my book – it needs to be rewashed first. Though working with upcycled fabric is efficient, because natural dyes work great in obscuring stains. A fully illustrated, practical guide that explains how to follow a sustainable approach to food and fashionAlways wash and rinse everything thoroughly with neutral soap to allow the dye to attach easily," advises Dye. "New fabrics are often treated with chemicals to protect against damage; even used fabrics can have traces of conditioner or dry cleaning chemicals which resist dyes. Dyeing is like decorating," she adds. "Preparing the surface to start with is tedious but well worth it for beautiful and long-lasting results." For dyestuffs, begin at home – with food waste. "Avocado skins and stones for pinks; used tea bags and coffee grinds for yellows; squash pumpkin skins for orange," says Behan.

BG: I have an MA in applied psychology in fashion and spent a long time researching the idea of identity in clothing. The idea that clothes are imbued with memories is supported by scientific research. We come to embody the clothes and they influence the way we think, feel and function. There’s a link between this phenomenon and the desire to buy new clothes – they carry a promise of who we may become while wearing them. In that context, this book attempts something radical – clothes emerging from the processes of this book say more about the past rather than the fantasy of the future. When you hand-make something, from the book, it’s about the experience of creating the garment – think about the onions that grew from seeds, a process which took months. Then the cooking and waste collection that led to the dyeing of the fabric. This finally culminated in a garment. The challenge – and the joy – of plant dyeing is to learn it well. "There is a lot of diversity among contemporary natural dyers, but what unites us is a love of colour and a taste for alchemy," reflects Susan Dye. "Using a pile of unremarkable dried weld leaves to create a hank of electric-yellow yarn never ceases to give me a thrill. Dyeing requires a satisfying attention to both science and art. Whether consciously or not, successful natural dyers are masters of chemistry and biology. We learn how to extract dye molecules from plants and bind them to fibres. And in all kinds of processes, it's important to control temperature, alkalinity, acidity." Swap food waste and fast fashion for homegrown produce, delicious vegan dishes, and a contemporary capsule wardrobe with the help of fashion designer, dressmaker, and writer Bella Gonshorovitz. It’s a process that designer and author of Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear Bella Gonshorovitz – who has contributed dyeing recipes for the textiles garden – has fallen in love with over the years. “I started making this connection between the things that I grew in my allotment to the things that I cook and to the dyeing process,” she explains. “The whole process of growing, cooking, of dyeing with the leftovers [means] you have a truly slow fashion garment that’s imbued with meaning.” Bella: I’ve been vegan for 14 years now. There’s been such a shift in attitudes towards veganism. Now, it's something that people are keen to experiment with, which is fantastic.That’s why I spent a long time on the sewing illustrations. If you don’t know how to sew at all, it’s probably not the best place to start, but if you have some experience, the onion dress is probably the easiest project. And the wonderful thing about natural dye is that, if you do have an old cloth that is imbued with memory and some stains, the dye works quite well with it. BG: My tentative dye ‘recipes’ are for 100g of fabric. It is hard to write down a dye recipe; from one day to the next so many things can change, affecting the shade of dye obtained. It may vary depending on the fabric, water pH level, time in the foraging season, the freshness and quality of the crop etc. The reason recipes are included in the book is to show people a tentative spectrum of colors they can achieve. BG: It is safe to be disposed of in the drain. Water rich in nettle can be fed to plants. Alum water, or the mordanting water could be given to hydrangea plants. Dyeing is however a heat and water resource-intensive process. I always feel that everything can continually be more sustainable but nothing is ever truly sustainable. Whether you’re looking to rethink your lifestyle, embrace slow fashion, try a plant-based diet or simply give growing your own produce a go, Bella’s friendly, accessible approach to sustainable living will help you get started, create more and waste less. The aim here isn’t for readers to grow all of their vegetables, hand make all clothes, or even convert to a strict vegan diet. It is about establishing a more intimate connection with nature and finding a new perspective on mass-produced products. With clothes, as with vegetables, the end product is often presented in a manner detached from its origins and it’s too easy to forget that everything we eat, consume and wear comes from nature. AS: What is the elaborated concept of garden to garment?