About
Üs
Studio Kühü is where colour becomes language — a conversation between nature, art, craft, and story.
Founded by textile artist and designer Mariana Leyva, Studio Kühü is a London-based natural dye studio rooted in her Mexican heritage and shaped by her life in the UK. The studio bridges craft, sustainability, and cultural storytelling, transforming the ancient art of natural dyeing into a contemporary dialogue between materials and memory.
Through a circular and regenerative process, Studio Kühü offers a healthier alternative for the skin and the senses, creating textiles that breathe with the body and tell stories of colour inspired by the seasons and the rich botany of the American continent.
Kühü means “colour” in the Otomí language, still spoken in central Mexico — a word that reflects the botanical richness, ancestral heritage, and artisanal mastery that inspire the studio’s work.
We work exclusively with the highest-quality natural and organic materials, paying tribute to the vibrant diversity of the Americas — particularly Mexico, Mariana’s birthplace and the heart behind Studio Kühü.
At Kühü, colour is not surface but substance — a vessel for care, transformation, and connection.
Manifesto
We see colour as memory, transformation, and ritual.
At Studio Kühü, natural dyeing is understood as ancestral alchemy — a dialogue between plants, minerals, water, and cloth. Each hue is born from patience and transformation, carrying stories that have travelled across centuries and cultures.
Our practice is regenerative — it does not end at sustainability. We return to the soil with respect, reusing dye baths, composting plant matter, and working with food waste and botanicals that might otherwise be discarded.
We honour impermanence, the quiet shifts of time, and the beauty of imperfection.
By sharing knowledge through workshops, education, and collaborations, we nurture community as much as textiles.
Studio Kühü exists to regenerate — the soil, the craft, and our sense of connection to nature and to one another.
Each naturally dyed piece is created with care and requires a gentle, mindful approach. Colours shift with wear and time, carrying the traces of life — much like we do.
Echoing the Nahua vision of in xóchitl in cuícatl — beauty in what is fleeting, truth in impermanence — and the philosophy of Wabi-sabi, we embrace imperfection as a form of beauty, and change as a form of truth.
Every piece is an offering — a gesture of reverence, resistance, and renewal.
The Hands behind Studio Kühü
My practice is rooted in the poetry of colour and the quiet transformation of natural materials. I work with plants, minerals, and time — listening to what each fibre and pigment wants to reveal.
Mariana Leyva is a fashion designer and textile artist from Mexico City, working purely with natural dyes.
Her practice bridges tradition and innovation, blending ancestral knowledge with contemporary design.
Educated in Mexico, Spain, Italy, and London, Mariana worked across different areas of the Mexican fashion industry before moving to the UK, where she founded Studio Kühü in 2017 to dedicate herself fully to natural dyeing.
Her work expresses her Mexican heritage and UK influence with a contemporary aesthetic. Mariana continues to explore the power of plants and their non-verbal and chemical ways of communicating with us.
Her colour palettes often combine dyes from the Americas with locally sourced flowers and plants, applied through ancient techniques on UK and European materials. Each piece is a homage to nature and an expression of her respect for Mother Earth.
Not only for nature’s gifts of colour, form, and texture, but also for the need to embrace a sustainable and circular economy, as it once was.
Mariana has had the privilege to work, collaborate, and learn from makers, designers, natural dyers, environmentalists, artists, and scientists who have profoundly influenced her practice and outlook.
Through her work with natural dyeing and sustainable methods, Mariana has become an advocate, dedicating her energy to sharing, teaching, and contributing to the reevaluation of fashion and its role in a sustainable world.
She says, “Studio Kühü may not be the biggest brick in the pile, but foundations are made of many — and the strength to influence and create change comes from the collective.”
