Welcome at the site of the Museum of Blue Dyeing!

 

 

Our new exhibition in the museum:

23. November 2006 - 31. May 2007: "The everliving jeans"

 

Workers as well as prime ministers, everyone wears them. It is hard-wearing and continually able to renew, seldom in fashion, yet always ”in”. It is jeans, the never fading.
This piece of clothing that shook the world, originally called ”blue jeans”, played an important role in several successful books of the past decade. We might think that the topic has already been exhausted, Levi-Strauss’ legendary garment has abundantly been presented. Jeans, however, got to every part of the word and ran its peculiar path in each country, and the cultural, political and social environment lent it a distinct substance. From this point on, the story can be named Jeans in Hungary.
But what has the Museum of Blue Dyeing to do with it, which cultivates the legacy a traditional craft?
The link is indigo dye (originally indigo, Indigofera tinctoria, and later its synthetic variety), which is still used for dyeing denim and making indigo-dyeing products by mean s of the reserve technique, applying patterns with resist paste and dyeing the cloth in indigo vat.
Joining the MaDok program and the Exhibition Domino series of the Museum of Ethnography, aiming at uncovering, documenting and presenting Hungary’s present and recent past, our museum took on treating this piece of clothing, not making a secret of its not so long-term aim, laying the foundations of the country’s first jeans collection.
The results of our past two years’ work are shown in this exhibition.
And what lies hidden behind the myth of the jeans?
Let us cite two examples, one foreign and one Hungarian.
While staying abroad, I came across a young Australian traveling in the US, who said that he never wore jeans at his business meetings as that would convey the wrong message. But he added: I love my jeans, I feel cool in them..
And the confession of a Hungarian student:

“At the school dance it is compulsory to wear the uniform: middy blouse and dark skirt. But even if it was not, I would not put on jeans on festive occasions. Disco is different. There it is practical, comfortable and trendy, if I want to be fashionable. I always wear jeans, just change the rest of my clothing.”