Audrey Louise Reynolds

The designer and artisanal dyer who creates color from all-natural ingredients she forages herself—seaweed, soil, squid, to name a few—on the importance of sustainable fashion, the physical effects of pigments, and making stoned spreadsheets.

AS TOLD TO GOSSAMER

Welcome to our series of conversations with curious, clever, and captivating people—in other words, the kind you’d like to sit next to for an hour or two.

I’m usually up by 6 or 6:30 a.m. I mentally organize my day in that time, when I’m just waking up and taking care of my dog. I used to water my garden, but I just put in a drip system so now I don't have to do anything. Sometimes I just go run the hose because it makes me feel better. I’d love to say I swim in the morning, but most days I’m just so overwhelmed with the list of things to take care of, like designing somebody else's collection so that I can afford to keep running my own company.

The easiest way to describe what I do is that I work in color, and specifically color from natural origins. Working with color means I can apply it to pretty much anything—to fashion, museums, or interiors—and it’s something I can continue to play with as I grow and as my interests change.

I'm a visual person. I can imagine a color and work backwards and know what natural ingredients I could combine to create it. It was never a learned thing. It was just experimentation. Or almost like math, where you just know that four and two is six. Somehow it's just there. I don't understand why that's what I have a relationship with but it's taken over my life.

 

I feel like the more you touch or manipulate things, the further it gets away from the taste of the thing that I want.