Justine Aldersey-Williams a textile activist, speaker and teacher specialising in natural fabric dyeing and regenerative clothing. She hand-dyes textiles at her studio, The Wild Dyery, in Hoylake using many plants grown on her nearby food, fibre and dye allotment and teaches both live and online courses in botanical dyeing techniques.
Justine qualified as a teacher in 1998 and has since taught extensively to schools, colleges, universities and crafts groups. She completed an MA in 2013 and has exhibited her work at New Designers, Indigo Paris and Rio. As a yoga teacher since 2006, Justine’s textile work intersects creativity, spirituality and environmentalism. She devises creative rituals that reconnect people with nature and sees botanical dyeing as a gateway craft that can inspire people to feel more reverence for their ecosystems.
She has collaborated with Fashion Revolution Week, offering ‘ReWild Your Wardrobe’ workshops and advocates for the use of natural dyes as an ‘haulternative’ way to extend the life of your clothing rather than buying new, fast fashion. In addition, she has spoken at industry events for the Royal Society for the Arts, British Council, Edinburgh Science Festival and The Wildlife Trust along with being featured in multiple publications.
She founded the Northern England Fibreshed, part of the international Fibershed not-for-profit organisation in March 2020 and volunteers to help establish regenerative textile systems using 'local fibres, local dyes and local labour' throughout the region.
Justine instigated the Homegrown Homespun project with Patrick Grant of social enterprise Community Clothing and the BBC’s Great British Sewing Bee and arts commissioning organisation, Super Slow Way who host the British Textile Biennial. With the few remaining Pre-Industrial textile specialists and a group of volunteers, they aimed to bring a line of locally grown, indigo linen jeans to market by October 2023. As a result, Justine made British fashion history by producing the U.K.'s first pair of 100% homegrown jeans. This involved her growing and processing indigo and linen from her allotment, hand spinning every day for 9 months!
Justine and her business partner Mark Palmer, are producers of 'British Indigo from Organic Woad' and they are pioneering the commercial upscale of production with their company Homegrown Colour Ltd.
