Our story

At TOR, we are a small slow fashion label produced by two friends, foraging, creating and living on the beautiful unceded Wurundjeri country (Melbourne, Australia).

We are natural dye artists and use the incredible source of nature around us to create our nature-dyed art.

Meet TOR

  • We are a partnership of two friends (friends first, artistic duo second) – Canan and Fiona.

    Both Canan and Fiona have a background in fashion design and business.

  • We have been experimenting with natural dyes for over 5 years.  We are both environmentalists, and were becoming increasingly aware of the impact of synthetic dyed fabric (and clothes) on the environment. 

    Plants have been used for thousands of years to make natural dyes.  Long before synthetic dyes took over.  So we became curious to learn the art of natural dyeing and how to dye fabric and fibre with nature so that we could reduce our impact on the environment.  

    We love the chemistry of natural dyeing. We forage local botanicals, spend time extracting the colour, and we then apply these dyes to our fabrics. Something really beautiful always happens, it’s a magical process. It never gets boring and we have loved building our unique style to create individual art on our TOR products.

    And even better - with the knowledge that our product will one day return to the earth, and break down without any harm or impact to the ground it ends up on.  

  • Read more on our process and why we use natural dyes here.

Photo credits Helene Athanasiadis

We at TOR, would like to acknowledge the First Nations people as the traditional custodians of the land, in particular the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung of the Kulin nation where we live, create and forage.