Dye It Yourself

Plastic objects are usually associated with mass production. However, people can assert their individual tastes while still taking advantage of the low cost of plastic mass production. Dye It Yourself embodies such a concept and proposes a new kind of status for plastic products. Made with a special kind of “porous plastic”, the surface of this plastic table absorbs water. This material is commonly used for industrial applications, but rarely used for everyday consumer products. The design focuses on the plastic’s porousness and re-interprets the material as plastic that can be dyed with colours. Each mass-produced Dye It Yourself plastic table can be personally and uniquely hand-dyed by the user using natural dyes extracted from safflower, cherry blossom and Japanese indigo, etc. These beautifully variegated colours and shades transform the plastic’s uniform surface, giving it an appealing outlook that resembles textiles. The colourful presence also transcends the fixed boundary between typical mass-produced and handcrafted merchandise. Mass-produced goods that were originally destined to be identical can now become one-of-a-kind objects made unique by the individual expression of each user. This proposition restructures the concept of mass production, and the relationship between mass-produced goods and consumers.