Adire is the Yoruba art of resist-dyed indigo, and Abeokuta — the city of Egba women dyers — has been its centre since the nineteenth century. Two grammars coexist: adire oniko, tied and stitched with raffia, and adire eleko, painted with cassava starch using a feather or a thin blade before the cloth enters the vat.\n\nThe vat itself is a living thing. Indigo leaves are pounded, fermented with wood ash lye and kept warm; a dyer reads its readiness by the copper sheen of the froth. Colour is built in repeated short dips, the cloth greening in the air each time before it turns blue.\n\nSynthetic indigo and wax print pushed adire to the edge in the 1980s. Its return is led by women running small dye yards who kept the natural vat alive — and who now supply designers who want a blue that is never twice identical.
