Long before printed fabric reached our shores, Yorùbá dyers were already telling stories with cloth. Adirẹ — from the Yorùbá adìrẹ, “tie and dye” — uses cassava starch resist, raffia ties or stitching to keep chosen areas white while the cloth drinks deep indigo in the dye pit (the famous àrọ̀ pits of Abẹ́òkúta and Ìbàdàn).

The patterns were never mere decoration. A cluster of birds might speak of children; a grid of squares could mark rank and religion; a bride’s adirẹ carried messages only her peers could read. Wearing it was a way of being understood before you said a word.

Today, workshops in Abẹ́òkúta, Òṣogbo and Ìbàdàn are training young dyers again, and contemporary designers are taking adirẹ to runways abroad. AFECO records the names and meanings of old patterns so that the vocabulary of the cloth survives with the craft itself.