From tie-dye to Haute Couture

By Rita Flórez • Photo by Anastasia Pottinger

Sharon Kilfoyle

Sharon Kilfoyle’s rise to fame as a high-end fabric artist started in a small cabin in the woods of Boone County, where she experimented with natural and synthetic dyes, and her passion for ancient Japanese techniques has been almost a lifetime in the making.

“The Japanese aesthetic has always inspired me since I was 10,” Kilfoyle, 61, said. “I lived in a regular South Saint Louis subdivision when I found a Japanese-English dictionary on the sidewalk.”

After her husband, Peter, died in 2001, Kilfoyle turned to her creative side at her rustic artist’s studio in Boone County, which included everything from writing to painting to the art of Shibori, an ancient Japanese tie-dye technique dating back to 800 BC.

In 2002, Kilfoyle took a job teaching English in Matsuyama, Japan. “I took my Shibori work with me to use as conversational pieces in (English) class,” she said. “When the faculty saw my work, they asked me to teach it in their extension program.”

Traditional Shibori uses indigo dye, but Kilfoyle uses synthetic dyes to layer color over color. “I start with white fabric and dye it a solid color,” she explained. “Then it’s wrapped tightly around a bottle. I take away some of the color and paint over it.”

When Keiko Tominaga, a former student of the artist in 2002, first saw Kilfoyle’s take on Shibori, she said she was amazed. The Japanese, Tominaga said, favor more subtle, natural tones. “Some of Sharon’s work was very bright and vivid,” she said. “Japanese Shibori only uses one or two colors. Sharon’s Shibori uses a lot of color, and that surprised us all.”

Tominaga described Kilfoyle as “an adventurer of color.” “I found her style very interesting in that way,” Tominaga said. “She doesn’t hesitate to try new things, and that gives us energy and freedom to also try new things.”

At times, Tominaga said, she is hesitant to be too different from the crowd and “working with Sharon, I feel myself more free to do what I really want to do.”

The freedom to try new things that Kilfoyle instilled in her students extends into her own life, as well. Eventually, Kilfoyle started incorporating Nuno felting into her silk Shibori work. Nuno felting is a technique that incorporates loose fiber, such as wool, into a sheer fabric. Kilfoyle, whose interest in dyes date back to the late ‘70s when she and Peter moved to rural Boone County, takes her Shibori silk and incorporates it into the felt. The result is a multi-textured piece of fabric that resembles colorful, chic cobwebs.

In 2005, Kilfoyle took what she knew to the Paris Academy in France, where she teaches dye work and felting, along with couture. The artist sees her felting as a fabric and wool collage. “It’s almost like painting with fibers,” she said. “After preparing your composition, you wet (the wool); you roll it and agitate it, and you come up with interesting collage pieces.”

Her hard work paid off when Yves Saint Laurent, a luxury fashion house in Paris, bought some of her Shibori and Nuno felting, which has led her to other opportunities in the fashion industry. “I met with a consultant in Paris who was interested in representing me at different fashion houses,” she said. “We’re trying to market my work as haute couture.”

But now, Kilfoyle—when she’s not globe trotting from Europe to Asia, then back to America—has a tough question facing her. How much time does she want to put into making these fabric pieces with the travel required of her?

“I love my home in the country,” said Kilfoyle. “It’s a good balance between Seoul (South Korea), Tokyo and Paris.

“I probably wouldn’t quit doing that,” she said. “But I’d like to spend some more time in the good ol’ USA.”

But even if Kilfoyle were to decide to stay in Boone County permanently, or just for an extended period of time, she probably wouldn’t stop traveling. “I’m sure I’ll go back (to Japan and South Korea) just for sourcing supplies,” she said.

Kilfoyle, who has a master’s degree from the University of Missouri in creative writing, also loves to write and sees her current work as something complementary to her first artistic endeavors. “I love imagery,” she said. “Poetry was my first love as far as creating. I’ve found that a lot of places where I got my inspiration for poetry are the same places I get my inspiration for design.”