09/04/2026
Some colors come alive the moment they’re printed and others lose everything that made them interesting on paper. So how do I choose the colors?
That’s something I’ve learnt again and again with block printing. A color can look completely right in a sketch or on a swatch, but once it meets the cloth, everything changes — the weave, the base color of the fabric, the way the pigment is absorbed, even the colors sitting next to it.
Sometimes a shade becomes softer and more beautiful than I imagined. Sometimes it goes flat. Sometimes two colors that looked perfect separately, suddenly compete with each other once they’re printed side by side. A lot of our color process is simply this: print, look, adjust, print again.
And very often, the color I finally choose is not the one I thought we would begin with. A lot of the color decisions happen right there at the printing table — I’m simply looking, reacting, and deciding whether I like the direction they’re taking.
