Mud Dyeing: coloring with the soil

How to Dress for Sacred Spaces:

A Guide to Ritual Dressing for Temples, Ceremony & Pilgrimage

For a woman who understands that what she wears is not separate from where she is going.

There is a moment before you enter a sacred space — a temple, a ceremony, a threshold you have traveled far to cross — when your body already knows. It slows. It softens. It becomes more deliberate. Your breath deepens before your mind catches up.

What you choose to wear into that space matters. Not because of modesty codes or travel checklists. But because the woman who chooses to go on a voyage of remembrance is not packing casually. She is assembling herself.

“"What you wear into sacred space is the first conversation you have with it."
— Rimmba

Over the years, working in the garden has grounded me. It’s made me connect to the land and given me space to disconnect from technology and the noise of the world. I get to drop in, spend real quality time with the craft, and keep deepening my knowledge of Natural Dyes.

**Mila Halter Dress: Marigold-Dye**

The marigold silk maxi dress radiates warmth and sophistication in a vibrant golden yellow tone, crafted from 100% genuine mulberry silk.

Marigold — a rich yellow-orange colour that evokes sunshine and optimism — is achieved using natural dyes from marigold flowers and onion skins, celebrating RIMMBA’s heritage of botanical dyeing with plants sustainably grown in Indonesia.

**Marigold Silk Chiffon – Sheer Scarf**

There are moments when we are called to soften.
To be held.
To return to what feels warm and familiar.

This silk chiffon scarf was created as a gentle connection to the frequency of flowers and joy.

Mud-dyeing has always been more than colour. Artists like Aboubakar Fofana describe it as a meeting point between earth, plants, water, and time — a process where nothing is separate. The tannin from the leaves, the iron in the mud, the microbes, the sun, the hands that work it… everything is alive and participating. I really connect to that. When we dye like this, we’re not just colouring silk — we’re in relationship with the land, letting nature shape the fabric in its own rhythm.

How Mud Dyeing Works at RIMMBA

Mud dyeing is not one dye bath

It's layering earth and plant over time

Preparing the Mud

The process begins in the rice paddies, where we gather iron-rich mud from chemical-free fields. Fresh paddy mud is alive with minerals and microorganisms, but it isn’t immediately dye-active. To awaken it, we mix the mud with rice-starch water. Rich in natural starches, rice water feeds the bacteria living in the soil. As the mixture ferments overnight, these microorganisms transform the iron into the specific form that can bond to natural fibres. Without this fermentation, the mud simply cannot “dye.”

Preparing the Fibre

Before touching mud, the silk itself must be prepared. We begin by mordanting the fabric with Symplocos, an alum-rich leaf harvested sustainably in Indonesia. This natural mordant helps the fibre hold onto iron. The silk is then immersed in a tannin bath. Different regions of Indonesia use different tannin-bearing plants such as Ceriops tagal, but at RIMMBA we work with gambir — a natural tannin extract from the Uncaria gambir plant, traditionally produced in Sumatra. With its exceptionally high tannin content, gambir strengthens the bond between iron and silk and creates the foundation for deep, earthy colour.

The Mud Dye Cycle

Once the fibre is mordanted and rich with tannins, the true rhythm of mud dyeing begins. The cycle follows a repeated sequence:

tannin → mud → dry → rinse → repeat.

The silk first returns to the tannin bath to recharge the fibre with plant tannins, then moves into the fermented iron mud, where the iron reacts with the tannins already embedded in the cloth. The coated fabric is laid under the sun to dry fully until the mud hardens and the silk becomes stiff. Only then is the mud rinsed away, revealing the first soft mineral tone. And then the process begins again — often 10 to 15 rounds, sometimes more, depending on the depth and darkness desired.

Pouring rice water into freshly gathered mud from the rice paddies marks the first step. The mixture is left to ferment for 24 hours. Rice water is rich in natural starches, and those starches “feed” the microorganisms already living in the mud. Once nourished, the bacteria become active, and their activity transforms the iron in the soil into a dye-ready form — the form that can bond to natural fibre.

Tannin-rich plant — here we’re using gambir from Sumatra. We boil down the sap to make the tannin bath, dip the fabric, then move it into the mud. Layering the tannin and mud over and over is what creates those deeper, earthy colours.

Why We Mud Dye

This practice is more than colour

It is cultural memory, land connection, and a ritual of belonging

Working with earth, rice paddies, tannin plants, and time teaches us to move slowly and listen.

It is incredibly spiritual to place your hands in soil, to know where your mud comes from, to honour the farmers and landscapes behind it, and to witness colour emerging through a process older than industry itself.

Mud dyeing keeps a lineage alive — one rooted in land, women’s knowledge, and ancestral chemistry — and it reminds us that true luxury begins with relationship: to earth, to craft, to place, and to the people who steward these traditions.