Our destination: La Rochelle, on the west coast of France.

For the ISEND 2011 UNESCO Natural Dye Conference.

This is the first time that our line of naturally-dyed clothing will be on display outside of Canada. We've done up six mannequin's for the exhibition hall and shipped fourteen boxes to France for the show. At ISEND we will be presenting our documentary In Search of Lost Colour, and Maiwa Owner, Charllotte Kwon, will be one of the presenters. Her talk will focus on marketing natural dyes and some of the paradoxes that might arise when the needs of marketers conflict with some of the most important aspects of natural dyes.

Charllott Kwon and Ismail Khatri go over some conference details on the computer.

We arrived in Paris on the 22nd and spent the morning of the 23rd making our way through the Paris metro to the train station. Who should we meet in the Gare Montparnasse but Ismail Khatri, also on his way to the conference. It seems that natural dyers are everywhere these days. All afternoon we slipped through the beautiful French landscape on our way to La Rochelle - the site of the conference.

The conference is organized by tireless natural dye advocate and researcher Dominique Cardon, who many will recognize as one of the key interviews in our documentary. Also directing ISEND is Anne de la Sayette from Couleurs de plantes, a specialist in the manufacture of natural dye extracts. (also featured in the documentary).

In London we met up with good friend Gale Anderson-Palm (second from the left) who is attending the conference. The team for this trip: (L-R) Loraie Tylor, Sophena Kwon, Charllotte Kwon, Anne Babchuk. Behind the camera, Tim McLaughlin.

In France, as we write this, it is early Sunday morning and we are about to head out to the exhibition hall and get started setting up the Maiwa Booth. There is very much excitement in the air and we are anxious to see all our acquaintances from the natural dye world.

The La Rochelle clock tower. In the words of Simon Calder this is a city "embroidered with history and ambition."

For those who are regular readers of our travels, please note that we haven't quite finished sharing our India trip yet. We'll keep you posted on the show at ISEND, put up some more of our 2011 workshops and then pick up that travel tale where we left off.

Comments welcome.