Name it an antidote to quick vogue: Japanese denims hand-dyed with pure indigo and weaved on a clackety classic loom, then offered at a premium to international denim connoisseurs, reviews AFP.
Not like their mass-produced cousins, the robust clothes crafted on the small Momotaro Denims manufacturing unit in southwest Japan are designed to be worn for many years and include a lifetime restore guarantee.
On website, Yoshiharu Okamoto gently dips cotton strings into a bathtub of deep blue liquid, which stains his arms and nails as he repeats the method.
The cotton is imported from Zimbabwe, however the pure indigo they use is harvested in Japan – its color far richer than artificial imitations, in line with Okamoto.
He calls it a “time-consuming and dear” methodology, generally used to dye kimonos within the Seventeenth-Nineteenth century Edo interval.
Momotaro Denims was established in 2006 by Japan Blue, one of some dozen denim producers within the seaside city of Kojima, famend for his or her artisan high quality.
“We’re very strict about all features of producing,” Japan Blue’s president Masataka Suzuki instructed AFP.
That features “whether or not the stitching is finished correctly, and whether or not the dye is gorgeous,” making native craftspeople with conventional manufacturing abilities indispensable. Their efforts don’t come low-cost, nevertheless. A regular pair of Momotaro Denims retails for round 30,000 yen ($200) whereas a silk-blend pair prices 60,000 yen.
The model’s most costly providing, woven by hand on a wood machine transformed from a luxurious kimono loom, has a price ticket of over 200,000 yen.
Following within the footsteps of in style high-end Japanese denim manufacturers reminiscent of Osaka-based Evisu and Sugar Cane in Tokyo, curiosity in Japan Blue is rising amongst abroad consumers.
They now account for 40 per cent of retail gross sales, and the corporate just lately opened its sixth Kyoto retailer concentrating on deep-pocketed vacationers.
‘Area of interest’ popularity
Denim-making flourished from the Sixties in Kojima, which has a protracted historical past of cotton-growing and textile-making.
Within the Edo interval, the city produced woven cords for samurai to bind sword handles. It then switched to producing split-toe “tabi” socks and, later, faculty uniforms. Now denim from Kojima is utilized by worldwide luxurious vogue manufacturers.
The marketplace for Japanese denims “has grown within the final 10 to fifteen years”, stated Michael Pendlebury, a tailor working a restore store in Britain known as The Denim Physician.
Though revered by denim aficionados in Western nations, they continue to be “not fairly reasonably priced for many” with one thing of a “area of interest” popularity, Pendlebury stated.
“Mass-produced denim manufacturers like Levis, Diesel and Wrangler are the biggest, and extra worn, however the highest high quality remains to be Japanese for my part,” he stated, including that the weak yen and a tourism increase might increase gross sales of made-in-Japan denims.
Momotaro Denims is called after a folklore hero in Okayama, the place Kojima is situated. It is a part of the broader denim-producing Sanbi space, which additionally consists of Hiroshima.
One other issue that makes manufacturers like Momotaro Denims idiosyncratic – and costly – is the usage of very noisy previous shuttle-weaving machines, which have solely 1 / 4 of the output of the most recent manufacturing unit looms.
They usually break down, however the one individuals who know how one can restore the machines are of their 70s or older, in line with Shigeru Uchida, a weaving craftsman at Momotaro. The model makes use of a handful of shuttle looms made within the Nineteen Eighties by an organization owned by Toyota.
“There are only some of them in Japan now” as a result of they’re now not made, the 78-year-old Uchida stated, strolling backwards and forwards between the machines to detect uncommon sounds that might sign a breakdown.
Regardless of the complexities, he says their cloth makes it price it. “The feel may be very clean to the contact… and when made into denims, it lasts fairly a very long time,” Uchida stated.
Suzuki says Momotaro Denims is a “sustainable” selection as a result of “regardless of whenever you deliver it to us, we are going to take duty for fixing it”.
“When individuals spend a number of time of their denims, the trail of their life is left on the garments,” relying on how they put on or wash them and even the place they dwell, Suzuki stated. “We need to protect such a mark so long as potential.”