Veritable Wax Hollandais--Vlisco Prints!

One of the most exciting fabric manufacturers in the world if Vlisco, the maker of Wax Hollandais fabrics. I know that I've written about them before, HERE, but due to the overwhelming interest I've received regarding that post, I've decided to write some more.

Vlisco started in 1846 in Helmond, Netherlands to take advantage of demand for batik fabrics.  At first, the focus was on Indonesian batik fabrics, but demand in West Africa for vibrant, beautiful fabrics took off and that market has since become the sole focus of Vlisco.  Currently, no fabrics are produced with Europe or US in mind, instead the focus in on Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and surrounding countries.  The consumer that Vlisco is meant for are the women of those countries who have their clothes custom made and are interested in beautiful clothes of lasting value.  Vlisco is trying to branch out and be a fashion brand and not just a fabric manufacturer.  They are currently opening Vlisco boutiques around the major cities of their target countries to cater to the tastes and trends of their customers.

At first, the fabrics were printed by hand with huge stamps but in 1910 the company started to transition into using mechanical printers.  The last hand-printed fabric was produced in 1993.  The fabric is produced by applying a specific kind of wax and then dye to high-grade fabrics.  The process that Vlisco uses is proprietary, but that is the gist of it--the fabric is repeatedly stamped with wax and dye to form the print.  The fabric itself isn't white--Vlisco uses a variety of base colors for their fabric, such as indigo, sepia, claret and related colors.  This gives the colors of the fabric more vibrancy and depth.  The wax that is used is made to crackle different every time, so the print that is produced is different in each spot and no piece of fabric is ever the same.

A new fabric collection is produced once a quarter, both because the customers want new prints regularly and to keep ahead of the copy-cats.  My favorite print from the latest collection is part of the Gallery of Poems line.  It's so cool!  It reminds me of traditional perfume bottles, kinda Arabian Nights but not overwhelming.  It would look so cool is a full, pleated skirt so that print could be seen but wouldn't look like a costume.

Vlisco is clearly one of the top producers of beautifully printed fabrics.  Not only are the prints interesting and innovate but the quality of the fabric is worth wearing!

Image and information obtained from Vlisco and their representatives.

A Brief History of Dutch Wax Fabric

There are some fabrics that are so iconic that they are instantly recognizable and have their own following. One of these is Dutch Wax Fabric.  What is Dutch Wax Fabric?  You've probably seen it, loved it and never knew what it was.  It is that vibrant, eye-catching print that is worn in parts of Africa, namely Nigeria, Togo, Ghana and several other countries.  The fabric was originally made as a knock-off of Indonesian batik fabrics by VLISCO.  It never actually ended up really competing with the fabric it tried to be, instead it found its own market in Africa.  Because the Dutch were not the colonizers of the Nigerian delta and surrounding area, it was more socially acceptable to trade with them, which allowed the fabric to catch on in the area.  It was adopted for frequent use as a clothing textile because let's face it, its pretty.

Wax fabric is still frequently used for clothing in parts of Africa and internationally.  Not only now does the VLISCO company produce it, but a wide variety of other companies do as well.  It is produced in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Nigeria, Ghana, China and other textile-producing countries.  One of the big issues with the fabric right now is that even though it was originally a knock-off, it is now being knocked off!  Yes, really!  VLISCO is such a popular brand that there are counterfeiters out there trying to pass their fabric off as genuine.  Also, because the fabric is so sought after because of its prints, companies have taken to only making limited one-time runs of their prints and not publicizing what their prints will be before they are sold in order to cut down on fakes.  Most of the methods involved in printing the fabric are proprietary but they somehow involve wax.  Other than that, I have no idea how the prints are done.

These prints are so beautiful that they are being used by fashion designers around the world for their collections.  In one recent instance, the label Zachary's Smile put out a special edition of wax-fabric dresses that were exclusively sold at Anthropologie stores.  These dresses were a huge hit and since then Anthropologie almost always seems to have at least one wax fabric dress for sale whenever I walk through the store.  Also, in 2008 Nieves Lavi put out a series of items in a peacock wax fabric print.  As the "tribal" trend continues, I think that more and more designers are going to start using wax fabric and that it will eventually become a mainstay in American fashion culture.

fabric swatch photos from www.aknfabrics.com and picture of Anthropologie storefront from www.missomnimedia.com

You may also be interested in another blog of my entries with more history of Dutch Wax Fabrics, and entry about Junya Watanabe's use of Wax Fabrics