<p>Indigo is nowadays a very widely used dye. Its usage is especially known for jeans trousers as it is the most common color. Its intensive use started at the end of the nineteenth century when an economic chemical synthesis method for industrial production was developed. The work will deal with the history of dyeing textiles blue with indigo starting with the traditional way by producing the dye from plants and giving an overview of the chemical reactions of different approaches for chemical synthesis after the determination of the structure of the indigo molecule.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>