Brief history of Adire

 The earliest pieces of this type were probably simple tied designs on cotton cloth handspun and woven locally (rather like those still produced in Mali), but in the early decades of the 20th century new access to large quantities of imported shirting material via the spread of European textile merchants in Abeokuta and other Yoruba towns caused a boom in these women's entrepreneurial and artistic efforts, making adire a major local craft in Abeokuta and Ibadan, attracting buyers from all over West Africa. Abeokuta is considered to be the capital of adire making in Nigeria,however some suggest that the large cities of Ibadan and Osogbo (Yorubaland) are more important in Adire making because Adire dyeing began in Abeokuta when Egba women from Ibadan returned with this knowledge. The cloth's basic shape became that of two pieces of shirting material stitched together to create a women's wrapper cloth. New techniques of resist dyeing developed.

The tradition of indigo dyeing goes back centuries in West Africa. The earliest known example is a cap from the Dogon kingdom in Mali dating to the 11th century, dyed in the oniko style.

However, by the end of the 1930s the spread of synthetic indigo and caustic soda and an influx of new less skilled entrants caused quality problems and a still-present collapse in demand. Though the more complex and beautiful starch resist designs continued to be produced until the early 1970s, and despite a revival prompted largely by the interest of US Peace corps workers in the 1960s, never regained their earlier popularity. In the present day, simplified stenciled designs and some better quality oniko and alabere designs are still produced, but local taste favours "Kampala" (multi-coloured wax resist cloth, sometimes also known as adire by a few people). However, there has been a recent revival of the Adire art by Nigerian artisans such as Nike Davies-Okunade, who has inspired a younger generation of designers including Amaka Osakwe (and her label Maki-Oh) and Duro Olowu. Political figures and celebrities such as Michelle Obama and Lupita Nyong'o have worn adire-inspired clothes recently. Read more on Wikipedia here