Why We’re Turning to Tie-Dye Right Now

By Brooke Jaffe

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – If you’ve found your hands both cracked from washing dishes and ink-stained from afternoons spent tie-dying solo or with your family, it’s safe to say you’re on trend. Tie-dying at home is proving to be the DIY project of choice during quarantine as evidenced by the sheer volume of social media posts showcasing at home craft projects.

Follow the hashtag  #tiedye on Instagram and you’ll see posts from around the globe. Designers agree that there is appeal to creating your own crafts at home. Stacey Bendet Eisner, Designer and Creative Director of the brand Alice and Olivia confirms, “it’s a do it yourself kind of world” right now.

Coincidentally, tie-dye prints have also been overtaking fashion at retail above and beyond the white tee and sweatsuit. New blank canvases ripe for the medium include socks, home decor and fashion accessories. The trend was already taking off before lockdown, and some brands are now doubling down. In a challenged business environment, experts cite unprecedented demand for both the materials to create a tie-dye piece at home and to buy the trend already made at retail.

Jonathon Spagat, Director of Marketing and Business Development for Rit Dye (the leading American company supplying dye at retail for the last 100 years) says there’s been an “incredible upward trend. We have some out of stocks, which is a first for me!” Rit Dye has been playing catch up (since reopening its warehouses in recent weeks) to wholesalers like Amazon and Walmart that receive weekly shipments from the vendor and are selling out.

If the idea of making your own tie-dye pieces does not appeal, the offering for men’s and women’s fashion is expansive and very much refreshed in its look. Spagat confirms that the new face of tie-dye is simpler in form. “I am noticing single color tie-dyes. Instead of traditional bright multi colored designs you would see at summer camp, we are seeing a huge shift towards focusing on one color” as well as the infusion of neutral colors “like tan or camel.”

According to Caroline McGuire, Fashion Director of trendy online retailer Shopbop, owned by Amazon, “Tie-dye has quickly become the season’s of-the-moment motif.” McGuire says, “Its resurgence more recently proves that consumers are eager to embrace playful, youthful, throwback trends.” Similarly, Michelle Wenke, Co-founder/Co-owner of Monrow, says “Tie-dye sweatsuits are the TOP quarantine/work from home trend we have been seeing and based on how long it has been selling at this demand I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon.”