The Colour That Belongs to Everyone

Saturday morning in Pererenan. Coffee, the fan on, the Rainbeau samples spread across the table. This is roughly how the conversation went.

Five years of the same piece

Robindra: I have been wearing a Rainbeau piece for about five years now. DJ sets. Weddings. School drop off. Anytime I want to feel good, that is what I reach for. And the strange thing is that the longer I wear it, the less it looks like something I put on, and the more it just looks like my own colour.

Myrah: That is what people write to us about. Not the fit. Not the linen. The feeling. Every single time this collection goes out, the messages that come back are about joy.

Robindra: Because I am Indian. So when I look at it, I see Diwali. The lamps, the powder, the streets full of it. But you are from Mexico.

Myrah: And I see Oaxaca. The mantas. The embroidery. Colours that were already living in the weave long before anybody thought to call it design.

Robindra: In the Andes those same colours are carried as a flag. Here in Bali they are offerings, ceremony, the whole calendar. Wherever you go, someone has already decided that this is what celebration looks like.

Myrah: It reunifies you with wherever you came from. And then it unifies all of us together. That part I did not plan. It just kept happening.

The colour is brewed, not printed

Myrah: None of it is printed. It could not be. Cochineal, sappanwood, eucalyptus leaf, pine needle tea. Days in the vat, then days in the sun. It is much closer to brewing than to dyeing.

Robindra: Which is why every batch argues with the one before it.

Myrah: Some seasons there is more cochineal and it comes out warmer, deeper, closer to rose. Some seasons the eucalyptus takes over and it turns soft and green and dusty. We do not correct it. Correcting it would be missing the entire point.

Robindra: It is a splash of different herbs and plants worn as cloth. A breath of fresh air. That is honestly what it feels like on the body.

Explosive, but quiet about it

Robindra: People assume it is loud. It is not. It is explosive colour delivered very subtly. A woven tapestry rather than a statement.

Myrah: Which is exactly why one piece can go to a wedding and to the school run in the same week. It does not shout over you. It sits with you.

No two, ever

Myrah: Ten women can order the same piece and ten different pieces leave Bali. A different tapestry. A different story.

Robindra: Like each and every one of us. Snowflakes in the grand design. So unique, so different, so geometrically special.

Myrah: Rainbeau is the celebration after the storm. The light coming back, meeting the water still hanging in the air, and breaking open into every colour it was quietly carrying the whole time.

If you have been circling this collection for a while, this is your sign. See what is currently in Rainbeau, and remember that whatever arrives at your door has never existed before and will not exist again.

With love from Bali,
Myrah