In Autumn/Winter 2015, Tender's 11th season, cotton and woollen fabrics were woven in England and dyed with woad and red-brown ochre.
Ochre has a rich artistic history which goes back into prehistory: Blombos Cave outside Cape Town in South Africa has designs drawn on its walls in red ochre which date back around 75000 years.The cave painings at Lascaux, France, are largely executed in ochre. More recently, in the 18th Century, English fishing boats had their sails ‘barked’ with a mixture of tar, oak bark liquor, fat, and ochre, in order to protect the fabric from sea water.
Double-faced pullovers were knitted from coarse undyed Shetland wool on the outside, with soft lambswool inside. Tshirt illustrations were hand-engraved into boxwood by Chris Daunt, and oil hardened bottle openers were cut from solid steel.
