August was a rough month for me, both personally and professionally. Up to this point, I haven’t posted much about myself outside of the world of clothes, despite the fact that I started writing on Substack as an outlet to discuss my personal experience of learning how to dress as a bigger guy. So maybe we just start there.

I’m Chaz, 35, and living in Ohio. I’ve been interested in clothes and the impact that clothes have on a person’s demeanor and confidence since about 2013. I lost 60 pounds in an unhealthy way in 2012 and began powerlifting, but these “successess” didn’t solve my self-loathing the way I thought it might. Although, I’m sure much of that could also be attributed to a bad break-up and a horribly abusive grad school experience. I took the “fake it until you make it approach” in an attempt to be an attractive, put-together, and not-depressed person. I frequented reddit, specifically r/malefashionadvice, and found that although all these men cropped their faces out when they posted fit-pics, they still looked so composed and confident. I wanted to be just like them. So I decided I would be.

And, long story short, it worked. For a while. When I left grad school in 2016, I moved across the country for work and, having lost my nearby gym, friends, and support system, gained that 60 pounds right back. For a while I refused to give up the nice clothes that I had spent money on as a poor grad student. Partly because of how significant those purchases were to me as a percentage of my grad school stipend, but also, and probably mainly, because I was in denial that I’d allowed myself to put all that weight back on and couldn’t accept that I’d failed myself.

I was convinced I’d lose that weight back. I bought a pair of 3Sixteen jeans in my old size and several shirts from Gustin that broke the bank. I knew once I received them in 3-4 months I’d be back to my Real Size and all would be well again. In 2019, I bought a pair of Pure Blue Japan jeans while in Tokyo. They were skin tight but I loved them. I never lost that weight. In fact, I gained an extra 40 pounds during COVID and haven’t been back under 200 lbs since 2020. I only allowed myself to buy clothes from Target or J. Crew factory in the meantime.

Something changed during my second trip to Japan in October 2025. I spent weeks leading up to the trip plotting out all the shops I wanted to check out. All of the slub and nep fabrics that have to be felt to be understood. And I finally allowed myself to buy something nice again. This time in my actual size.

Life lately has been a bit of a regression, in a sense. We got a puppy in June. He is the most adorable guy in the world, but if you’ve ever owned a puppy, you know the horror that entails. I’ve never had a puppy and I was woefully (mentally) unprepared. We’ve been sleeping on the couch every night for almost two months because if the puppy can’t see us while he sleeps, he will wail the entire night. In addition to the lack of sleep and many 2 am walks, I’ve been taking online classes two days a week. It ended up being a much more significant time investment than I anticipated and it’s hard to get a moment of silence to focus on coursework with a puppy. Puppy, classes, 9-5 job, I’m in a gigging band, working out, maintaining friendships and my marriage, trying to maintain Substack and Instagram for a creative outlet (depsite being beholden to no one I still feel an obligation and guilt when I don’t publish on my desired schedule). It’s too much. I’ve spread myself too thin.

There’s light ahead though. The puppy is getting easier to manage, slowly but surely. My online class has finished and it’s given me a new skill set and excitement for a potential career shift. I’ve had opportunities to to talk to some of my favorite brands, offers for collaboration, and some big news coming this week regarding the Denim Fit Finder app I built.

So here I am, being vulnerable, determined again to see the bright side of things and get my life back in order. Here’s some things that have been on my mind.

“Sonnets to Orpheus” Part 1, Sonnet 15 by Rainer Maria Rilke

I found this poem through Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay while researching orange dyes for my most recent essay.

”Dance the orange,” the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke had written, in a wonderful waltzing poem about a fruit and a colour that pretend to be sweet but are actually rather rambunctious and challenging.’ — Victoria Finlay

But it’s more than that. It highlights the impermanence of life. The rind of the orange is bitter and protective but hides the real treasures within. The same way we hide our true selves behind our outer shells and don’t allow ourselves to enjoy the nectar of life before it’s too late. It’s encourages you to taste the sweet juice before the flavor has faded. It encourages you to feel the rain on your skin. No one else can feel it for you. Only you can let it in.

It also feels particularly relevant because I spend a lot of time in therapy talking about mindfulness and being present. Living in the moment, enjoying what you have, and accepting your life and circumstances for what they are instead of what they could have been. I recommend the Life Wisdom podcast on Spotify and the book Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn if you are looking to live a more mindful life.

Dance the orange.

Story mfg. R.T.S. Line

The R.T.S. line by Story mfg is more quiet and minimalist than their main line. It’s “a collection of items naturally dyed with fruits, roots, bark, leaves and microorganisms, that lets the dye do all the talking. It’s stripped back of almost everything but textured fabric and dye.” It has all of the incredible hand-weaving and hand-dyeing you’ve come to expect from Story mfg., but a little less “weird” compared to the rest of their line. I love so many of the pieces in this line, but I especially loved the Greenhouse Shirt dyed with Indigo and Madder. So much that I ended up buying it. And then I canceled my order not 10 minutes later because I felt guilty about spending the money when we need to do some repairs at home. And then, 48 hours later, I bought it again. I’m wearing it right now. I apologize to the person navigating orders and shipping at Story mfg for who I am as a person.

Blackgaze

I forget sometimes how much I enjoy blackgaze. Mastodon is touring this fall with Alcest and Deafheaven and it sent me down a nostagic rabbit hole. It’s all I’ve been listening to this week. It’s so melodic and heavy and the wall of sound soothes my ADHD brain. But I’m still mad that Oathbreaker dropped such a perfect album with Rheia in 2016 and just fell off the planet? Rude.

Graziano & Gutiérrez

This brand feels similar to Story mfg. to me in the sense that they are focused on highlighting cultural heritage. In this case, it’s Mexican and mostly Oaxacan textile makers and dyers. I appreciate the dedication and authenticity, using things like Coyuchi, a naturally brown cotton native to Oaxaca, dyeing with cempōhualxōchitl (marigold), and the detail with which they document and highlight the local artisans as the pieces go through weaving and dyeing processes. I highlighted them and story mfg. both in my article on yellow and orange dyes yesterday. I actually caught the pre-orders for this one, but couldn’t justify $500 for the shirt. It feels like you’re paying for much more than the craftsmanship at that point. They sell jackets that cost less than this shirt. Oh well.

Too many clothes coming in, not enough going out

My wife has been rightfully calling me out for the amount of clothing showing up on our doorstep. Since I decided to allow myself to buy nice things again, regardless of my weight, I have been buying a lot of nice things. I donated nearly all of my old Target wardrobe and began replacing them with higher quality basics, and in my infinite wisdom have been buying as if I had to replace my entire wardrobe in one week. I have a large pile of clothes in my office to be listed on Grailed that I haven’t gotten around to listing. One major goal of September is to at minimum get all of my resale items posted, even if they don’t sell.

If you wanna help me out and save my marriage, I’ll be listing old garments here. I’ll have items from Bronson, Raleigh Denim, Vuori, Hiroshi Kato, Jomers (IYKYK), and more.

Returning to Form

Truly, what I want out of September is to just get back to consistency. Gym 4x per week, publishing twice a week, actually putting in an effort in my day job, finding time to see friends and be a good husband. Wish me luck.

Other random thoughts:

Engineer boots look so good but I don’t feel like I should lean in that hard to the heritage workwear vibe

I should get Paraboot Michaels instead

I need to set up ebay alerts because I can’t afford Michaels.

I wish Buck Mason were cheaper because I actually like many of their pieces. But for those prices? No way.

Tobacco & Musk from Ranger Station is so damn good. I wear it every day and I’ve barely put a dent in the quickdraw roller.

10 mL rollerballs are the way to go, I’m never buying a full bottle again

Dave Brubeck invented prog

I need one of those dumbphones that doesn’t allow me to play games. But still lets me read substack and refresh Fidelity all day

Anyways, thanks for reading.

Chaz

Yellow is everywhere in the plant world, more common, if anything, than red or true blue, but yellow is underrepresented among surviving textiles relative to its historical use. Something happens to fiber after it’s dyed yellow. Mostly, that something is light.

Make sure to check out the other pieces in this series:

Part 1 → The Hidden Work Behind Natural Dyes
Part 2 → A Tale of Two Fibers
Part 3 → Dyed in the Wool
Part 4 → The Reds Worth Fighting Over
Part 5 → The Quiet Complexity of Brown

Easy to Find, Hard to Keep.

If you compare yellow to the colors already covered in this series, you’ll find a stark contrast. Indigo’s blue molecule, indigotin, once oxidized, becomes insoluble and is held within the fiber, giving indigo resistance and light. Red, once you had cochineal or kermes in hand, cooperated too. Add alum to the dye and you had a stunning crimson that people told tales of for centuries. That is not the story of yellow.

Orange has it worse and appears even less than yellow in the historical textile records, let alone enough material to justify an essay of its own. That is why it is folded into this piece rather than saved for an installment that would have nothing to fill it. Consider it the same sunshine problem, one shade further around the wheel.

Weld: The Closest Thing to a Reliable Yellow

Weld (Reseda luteola) is the closest thing the pre-synthetic world had to a dependable yellow. Its colorant is luteolin, a flavonoid concentrated throughout the leaves, stems, and seed capsules, and harvested at flowering for maximum yield. On alum-mordanted wool, weld produces a bright, clean yellow that is, by the standards of natural dyes, unusually lightfast. That single property is most of why weld became one of the staple dyes of the medieval European trade, standing alongside woad for blue and madder for red. It appears in the Bayeux Tapestry. It remained in use from Scandinavia through the Middle East for centuries, which is a significant time for any dye plant to remain commercially important.

“Unusually lightfast” is a relative claim, though. Weld fades more slowly than the other yellows in this piece, but it does fade. Weld’s role in historical green points to the same problem: when weld yellow is paired with woad blue in an overdye: the yellow degrades first, and centuries later a museum textile designed to read as green reads as blue-green, or blue, instead. Weld is the best of a difficult category, but it is not without its flaws.

Myrobalan: The Tannin That Survived Industry

Before myrobalan became a popular choice for coloring cloth, it was a medicine. The dried fruit of Terminalia chebula, native from the sub-Himalayan belt of Nepal and northern India down through Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Indochina, and southern China, is one of three fruits in Triphala, the Ayurvedic compound still described as the “King of Medicine” in Tibet. Its earliest written mentions run through the Charaka Samhita in the first century CE and the Sushruta Samhita in the sixth, with the Bhavaprakasha Nighantu still citing it thirteen centuries later. Its medicinal use clearly predates its documented importance as a dye and tanning material. This is the same pattern we see in walnut, back in Part Five, where Cherokee and Chippewa dyers used black walnut hulls as medicine and dye together, the two uses never fully separated.

Myrobalan left South Asia the way a lot of the region’s plant knowledge did, through Arab trade networks. It shows up in tenth-century Islamic medical literature and became one of the most common drugs in medieval European medicine, carried west alongside the dyes and aromatics. Europe wanted it for the medicine first. What it got, eventually, was a tannin supply.

That tannin supply became an industry in its own right. Myrobalan fruit runs up to 40 percent tannin by weight, high enough that India used it at industrial scale in leather tanning, on its own and blended with other vegetable tannins like black wattle and avaram. Its story splits from cutch’s here in an interesting way. Part Five traced how chrome tanning, patented in 1884, made cutch obsolete within a few decades. Myrobalan never got displaced the same way. Tanneries started using it as a last tannage, applied after chrome tanning to add weight and fix a fast color, meaning it survived by attaching itself to the very industrial process that ended most of the vegetable tannins around it, rather than by competing against it. The cotton-and-iron pretreatment chemistry behind myrobalan’s color itself, and the Kalamkari tradition built on it, is covered in A Tale of Two Fibers.

Osage Orange, Old Fustic, and Jackfruit: Three Trees, One Gold

That brings us back to the hedge fence. Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) is native to the south-central United States, where Native communities extracted a clear gold dye from its wood long before the tree became a fencing crop for European settlers. The active compound is morin, pulled from the heartwood, inner bark, or shavings. Depending on the mordant, morin gives a golden tan with alum or a deeper gold with chrome. It also holds its color well against washing, but necessarily against direct sun.

Morin is not unique to Osage orange. Old fustic, the historical commercial dye wood extracted from Maclura tinctoria, came from a related tree traded out of Central and South America into Europe from the sixteenth century onward, and it produces color through the identical molecule. Two trees from two different continents, no contact between the traditions that used them and they still converged on the same chemistry. It is the same pattern this series found in cutch and lac: a dye that was fully worked out and commercially significant in one hemisphere while dyers on the other side of the ocean solved the identical problem from scratch.

Old fustic’s commercial peak came in the late nineteenth century when the British Indian Army had moved to the khaki field uniform, colored locally by various means before supply for home and colonial regiments increasingly shifted to European dye-works running fustic yellow with an iron mordant. It held that role until synthetic dyes displaced it from military and commercial use in the early twentieth century.

A third source converges on the same molecule from a third continent. Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus), native to South and Southeast Asia, yields morin from its heartwood and sapwood, extracted by boiling wood chips down into a dark broth. For centuries, it has been one of the primary dyes for Buddhist monastic robes across Thailand and the wider region; forest monks in Thailand still wear robes colored from jackfruit heartwood today. The tradition is old enough that the Buddha is recorded prescribing exactly which plant parts a monk could dye with at all: roots, trunks, bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit, always boiled. Unmordanted, jackfruit gives a dull, “dirty” yellow-brown rather than a clean gold. A metal mordant sharpens it toward a brighter yellow, the same trick that brightens Osage orange. “Saffron robes,” the common shorthand for Buddhist monastic dress, is at least partly a misnomer. A real share of that color historically came from jackfruit wood and other barks, not saffron at all.

Young fustic is a different plant entirely, Cotinus coggygria, the smoke tree. It produces a similar-toned yellow from a different compound, fisetin, not morin. Old fustic and young fustic share a market name and a color family, but a different place entirely.

Chamomile: The Garden Plant That Entered the Dye Pot

Dyer’s chamomile (Cota tinctoria, along with the related Chamaemelum nobile and Anthemis arvensis) belongs to the same flavonoid family as weld, with apigenin, quercetin, and luteolin present in different ratios. The relationship between chamomile and weld shows in the dye pot: alum gives a buff, chrome pushes toward gold, and iron saddens into an ocher-olive that reads almost as a different color family entirely. Chamomile is also used to overdye onto indigo for warm greens.

The distinction between chamomile and the others is cultural. Weld and fustic are dye plants first. They were grown, traded, and written into dye manuals because of the colors they produced. Chamomile was already in European gardens, planted for pathways, tea, and medicine, long before anyone treated it as a dye source. Dyeing was a second job the plant picked up, not its original purpose. The plant earns its place in the dye pot by already being close at hand. Onion earns its place the same way.

Onion Skin: The Kitchen Yellow

If weld is the historical anchor, onion skin is the living-practice counterpoint: a universal yellow found in every kitchen. Its colorants are quercetin and related quercetin glycosides, concentrated in the bulb’s dry outer layers.

Without a mordant, onion skin gives a mustard tone. Alum pushes it toward the deep golden-orange most home dyers report. Iron pulls it to moss and olive, echoing chamomile’s iron response. What makes onion skin genuinely distinctive is that it works on cotton, a cellulose fiber rather than the protein fibers most natural yellows favor, without a mandatory mordant step, because the skins carry enough natural tannin to do some of that work themselves. It is the most accessible yellow in this piece, and the one a modern dyer is most likely to reach for first.

Marigold: The Sacred Flower That Rarely Became Cloth

Dyers sometimes describe what happens to a poorly bonded yellow as the “gym sock” problem. The dyes applied straight to white cotton or linen with no real mordant to hold them, go through a few wash cycles bright and gold and come out the other side dingy, patchy, and off-white, like an old gym sock. The pigment is not gone, but has been stripped unevenly, degraded by soap and light faster. Marigold, one of the most culturally significant yellow-orange sources in the Americas, runs into a version of the same problem. The reason marigold never became a textile staple has as much to do with culture and economics as with chemistry.

Cempasúchil, Mexican marigold (Tagetes erecta and the related wild Pericón), carries the pigment lutein in concentrations high enough to produce a real, workable gold. It also carries one of the oldest continuous ritual associations of any dye plant we’ve met yet. It is the flower of Día de los Muertos, grown to guide the dead back to the living for one night a year. That association cuts hard against everyday commercial use in many of the communities that grow it. A flower whose cultural significance is funerary and votive does not move easily into a button-down shirt.

The economics compound the cultural resistance. Heirloom Cempasúchil, the variety with enough lutein to hold a strong, lightfast gold, is fussy. It is vulnerable to pests and weather in a way that has made it difficult to grow at commercial scale. Over the last decade, cheaper, more resilient imported and genetically modified marigold seed has taken over much of the commercial growing, and that seed does not carry the same lutein concentration. A dye house that wants a real gold from marigold today has to source scarce heirloom pericón specifically, rather than buy whatever marigold happens to be cheapest at market. That is the opposite of how a commodity dye plant is supposed to behave.

When a Mexican textile house does invest the labor a real natural dye demands, marigold usually is not what gets chosen. Cochineal red, indigo blue, and palo de Brasil’s purples (brazilwood) and pinks are the pigments with the deepest trade history and the strongest lightfast results in Mexican textile tradition, and they command premium pricing internationally. Marigold gold does not carry that same weight, commercially or historically, next to those three. Marigold does work to dye cloth, but when a workshop has to choose which labor-intensive natural dye is worth the investment, marigold loses the fight. I’ll cover a few exceptions later in the Modern Makers section.

The Many Failures of Yellow

There is no one clean answer to yellow dye the way there almost is with blue. There are half a dozen partial answers, each solving a different piece of the problem of lightfastness, washfastness, etc., with no single dye solving all of it.

Orange takes the same problem and makes it thinner. Yellow is abundant but unstable whereas orange is less common as a natural textile color and often exists historically as a mixture, a shifted shade, or a secondary result of another dye process. That is why it belongs here rather than in a separate installment. It’s not because orange is uninteresting, but because it is slight.

Yellow struggles to survive while orange has barely ever existed as a tradition at all.

Orange: When Yellow Runs Out of Road

The tree that opened this piece is named for a color it does not produce. Osage orange dyes gold, not orange: the fruit gave the tree its name, and the wood gives dyers something else entirely.

Actual orange, in the natural-dye record, is surprisingly scarce. Most of what reads as orange is either a yellow pushed toward red, a red diluted toward gold, or two dyes made to meet in the middle. Orange has a fragmented history.

Built Oranges: Mixed or Pushed

Most natural orange is not a single source doing the work on its own. It is two dyes read together, or one plant’s color pushed further than it naturally wants to go.

Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) is the clearest example. Its petals hold two pigments: a water-soluble yellow, usually rinsed out and discarded in classic processing, and the prized carthamin red, isolated through alkaline extraction and famous as the source of Japanese benibana rouge. In some East Asian dyeing traditions, dyers did keep that yellow fraction but would pair it with a second, berberine-based yellow known as Kihada, or Amur cork tree bark (Phellodendron amurense) and pushed the mixture toward a fiery orange-red rather than a clean yellow or orange.

Kamala: The Color People Settled For

Kamala (Mallotus philippensis) comes closer to a genuine single-source orange, though even here the language is shaky. Its colorant is rottlerin, harvested from the red, powdery glands coating the plant’s fruit capsule. This process has been documented in Western dye chemistry since at least 1855 and used across South and Southeast Asia under regional names including banato in the Philippines. Sources describe the result on silk and wool as a “golden red.” It’s close enough to orange, but still far enough from a clean color that it was rarely used.

Annatto: A True Orange with a Fugitive Life

Annatto (Bixa orellana), native to tropical Latin America, is unambiguously orange thanks to bixin and norbixin which coat the seeds inside the plant’s spiny pods. The Aztec and Maya used it on textiles and murals across dozens of documented sites, in manuscript painting, even to color the cacao they drank, and some accounts describe it functioning as a form of currency. It wasn’t their most prestigious color, but annatto held real status. European traders thought less of it. Annatto’s orange is fugitive in sunlight, and by the eighteenth century European dye manuals had downgraded it to a “lesser dye,” useful mainly to “top off” a more stable color at the very end of the dyeing process — a last pop of orange over a base that would still be there once the annatto itself had faded. The same plant went from a direct, valued color to someone else’s afterthought, depending entirely on whose standards it was being judged against.

It survives as a living practice today, just not as a clothing dye. Annatto’s coloring is the reason a wedge of Red Leicester cheese or a stick of good butter reads orange instead of pale yellow.

Turmeric: A Bright Orange With a Short Fuse

Turmeric (Curcuma longa) is probably the yellow-orange every reader already knows. It’s the prime example of direct-dye I referenced in Part One used to illustrate mordant-free bonding in the first place. Curcumin bonds straight to fiber with no mordant needed, the same substantive trick onion skin and myrobalan use elsewhere in this piece. On the right fabric it reads convincingly orange, not just yellow. The catch is its washfastness. Turmeric holds up reasonably well against sun but can’t survive a washing machine. Most of the color strips out in the first two or three washes, and what’s left settles into a dull yellow from there, like the gym sock problem. It’s a different failure type than the other dyes in this article, but the same underlying story. A geniune orange that is gone almost as soon as it arrives.

These plants don’t form any real tradition of usage for orange dyes. It is barely a chapter at all in the color specturm.

Orange’s presence here is not a detour from yellow but the logical end of the same argument. Yellow is difficult because it fades. Orange is difficult because, historically, there was so little of it to lose. And also, it fades.

Why so Little Survives

Put the working set of dyes discussed in this article together and the pattern behind this piece’s title becomes clearer. Every yellow here is real and workable but none are durably lightfast. Orange has the same problem one level worse: not just unstable chemistry, but barely enough source material to describe a tradition at all. Weld is the strongest of the yellows, and even weld is only relatively stable. Annatto is the closest thing orange has to an anchor, and annatto’s textile history is thinner than any single yellow covered here.

That’s most of the mechanism behind yellow and orange’s near-absence from the surviving historical record, though not all of it works the same way. Weld and annatto lost slowly, to sunlight, over decades. Turmeric lost in the washing machine within the first few washes. Safflower never fully committed to being one color to begin with. Marigold’s absence is a combination of its cultural weight and labor economics deciding a color wasn’t worth the investment, despite whatever the plant itself could do. Yellow and orange didn’t disappear from the historical record for one single reason. They each disappeared because none of them could do the full job.

Modern Makers

The yellow tradition survives today less as a flagship color than as a working ingredient in combination with other dyes.

Story mfg. keeps myrobalan, or Kadukkai (கடுக்காய்)in Tamil, alive through its Kaduka Dyed collection. Very few pieces in this collection, however, are a true yellow, but have been modified with mordants or combined with additional dyes. The R.T.S. CO-80 colorway, seen on pieces like the Creed Pants and Greenhouse Shirt, uses myrobalan combined with iron for a deep black.

Story mfg. also dyes with jackfruit wood too, visible in process photography on its behind-the-scenes account. For this dye, they utilize scrap jackfruit wood discarded by jackfruit agricultural farms. As a classical Tamil word, Palapattai translates to a "mixture, blend, or collection of diverse things.” It mirrors the ethos of this collection, which blends ancient botanical practices with modern, upcycled slow fashion. The jackfruit wood used is recycled from agricultural waste from jackfruit farms.

45R approaches yellow through Yoikusazome, the brand’s original plant-based dye built from Japan’s traditional seven autumn herbs. One colorway, Golden Lace, is dyed with ominaeshi (Patrinia scabiosifolia), a yellow-flowered plant in that seven-herb set. It’s usage as a yellow dye seems to be exclusive to this 45R collection as I have found no other literature discussing its usage as a dye.

Graziano & Gutierrez is one of the few places where marigold/pericón can be found in menswear. The Portland-based workwear label is built on a direct partnership with weavers in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, working directly with the indigenous community. Similar to Story mfg., they are not using the dyed fiber as it’s own statement, but in combination with other dyes or as an overdye, such as in their pintor shirt and pericón camp shirt.

Conclusion: The Colors That Won’t Sit Still

There’s something fitting about colors this skittish being the ones most associated, across cultures, with sunlight itself. Yellow and orange don’t ask you to earn them the way red does, and they don’t reward patience the way the eighty cycles of dorozome reward patience. They just show up bright, do their job, and start fading the moment they’re finished, sometimes within a lifetime, sometimes within a single season of hard light. The same way the sun itself rises every morning without effort and disappears at night no matter how badly you may want to hold onto it.

That isn’t a flaw in either color so much as an description of what they are. Not everything you wear needs to last thirty years to be worth wearing. Some things are meant to be bright while you have them, then quietly become something else. Nothing in life can last forever and it’s important to enjoy the beautiful things while we have them.

Next in the Built for Color Series, Tyrian Purple: The Color That Smelled like Death. In the meantime, the Fit Finder is the best way to find denim that actually fits the body you have. Suggestions based on real measurements, not size-tag mythology.

A chain-stitch embroidery machine uses a specialized hooked needle to pull a single thread up through the fabric from below, forming interlocking loops that create a flexible, chain-like pattern. Because the operator controls the needle’s direction using a 360-degree crank beneath the table, they can fluidly “draw” intricate designs freehand in any direction. Today you mostly find it in vintage country/western wear or kitschy bowling shirts. It’s a craft that survives because a handful of people in a handful of towns refuse to let it die.

Risa and her husband Bahzad Trinos had both built their careers around fabric. Chain-stitching was meant to be a hobby, maybe a small Etsy-style side hustle to cover the cost of the machine. They would buy blank t-shirts, embroider a logo or a name for whoever asked, and sell a few here and there on Japan’s version of Etsy. It worked, except for one problem: the blanks were cheap, and the embroidery was high quality. That discrepancy didn’t sit right with them and they felt that the quality of the embroidery was wasted on a cheap mass produced t-shirt. They decided to make a shirt of their own that matched the quality of their craftsmanship.

“Being fabric people, we couldn’t live with that,” Bahzad told me. Once they were sourcing yarn and testing fabric, the side hustle stopped being a side hustle and became an obsession.

That’s where Wonder Looper started. “It wasn’t like we were set out to make an apparel brand,” Bahzad said. “It was, let’s pay for a chain stitcher.”

From Apparel Veterans to Brand Owners

The reason a t-shirt problem turned into an entire brand instead of a single project was that Bahzad and Risa weren’t new to any of this.

Bahzad was the first employee at Naked & Famous Denim, joining founder Brandon Svarc in 2009 and relocating to Montreal in January 2010. For over a decade, he was involved in nearly everything the company touched: fabric development, production, wholesale, the whole operation before it had any real staff to speak of.

Risa came from Big John, the original Japanese denim maker, which is how the two met. Before that she’d worked for a surf company in California. Between the two, they had over forty years of apparel, retail, wholesale, and customer-service experience before setting off on their own.

They moved to Japan at the end of 2019, planning to split time between Yokohama and Montreal while working remotely for Naked & Famous. COVID-19 changed everything. Bahzad’s visa status meant that if he left Japan, he couldn’t get back in, so the couple planted themselves there for the duration of the pandemic. While their colleagues in Montreal slept, they ran their side of the business overnight, and then picked up chain-stitching to pass the extra hours.

Their decades of knowledge in sourcing yarn, developing fabric, and running production made it much easier than one might anticipate when setting out to make the best t-shirt they could. When they had a small collection built of the now infamous Double Heavyweight T-Shirt, they went to retail partners they already knew from their Naked & Famous years.

The shirts sold out quickly.

Being industry veterans, companies and customers alike already knew their skill and trusted their judgment. That mutual respect made their business model straightforward: make a high quality product, show it to people who trust your judgment and get them to buy in, and repeat.

Wonder Looper ran part-time for years before Bahzad and Risa left Naked & Famous in the fall of 2024. That helps explains why Wonder Looper doesn’t seem particularly interested in following the usual rules of apparel.

They Make What They Like

A basic question I had for Bahzad was exactly how they decided which direction to take their collection once they’d perfected that first shirt. I couldn’t imagine that there was an audience out there demanding triple heavyweight shirts or hoodies made from cotton fibers that came loose and lingered the factory air during spinning. The answer, according to Bahzad, is not the market. “It’s really based on our taste. I’m not driven by whatever commercial trends are doing, because commercial trends don’t really translate into what’s happening in the heritage realm.” Samples that cost thousands of dollars to produce get shelved if they come back looking merely fine.

“It has to spark joy. It has to mean something. It has to be special. I hate to sound cliche.” — Bahzad Trinos

It’s a defensible business model, assuming that the duo’s taste has already proven itself, and by Wonder Looper’s growth over the past year, it has. They only moved into a proper office a little over a year ago. Before that, inventory lived in a rented twenty-square-meter apartment. Bahzad credits some of the broader tailwind to The Bear, which he thinks did more than any single piece of marketing to get people outside the heritage-menswear world thinking seriously about what they put on their bodies. But growth in this space, he was careful to point out, looks nothing like mainstream growth. It’s slower, smaller in absolute numbers, and measured in a different currency: whether the people already paying attention are paying closer attention.

That approach shows up clearly in the materials they choose to work with.

The Cotton Farmer They Talk to Every Week

Over the last few seasons, one of the things that has sparked the most joy for Bahzad and Risa is Foxfibre® cotton.

Foxfibre® is a registered trademark developed by breeder and grower Sally Fox. Using the name requires signing paperwork, but no licensing fee. Sally doesn’t charge for it. She just wants the trademark on the product, which makes sense to Bahzad for an obvious reason: if you’re using Foxfibre®, you want people to know it’s Foxfibre®.

Foxfibre® is a naturally colored cotton developed by decades of cross-breeding different varieties to get the results that Sally wanted. But naturally colored cotton is not a new idea. Brown and green cotton grew across the Americas for the last 5000-6000 years, but industrial spinning killed the colored varieties off: their fibers were too short for the machines, so a century of breeding pushed cotton toward longer, stronger, and whiter. Meanwhile, colored cotton turned into a niche curiosity nobody could actually manufacture with.

Sally Fox solved that in the late 1980s by crossing a short-staple brown cotton sample she pulled from a paper lunch bag in her boss’s greenhouse with a long-staple pima cotton, breeding them for roughly a decade before it was strong enough to run through a mill.

The relationship between Wonder Looper and Foxfibre® goes back to Naked & Famous, where Bahzad and Risa first introduced the naturally colored cotton to the line.

The tannins that give the fiber its color also make it naturally resistant to pests and mold. It also means that the cotton can be darkened further by adding a mordant, if one wishes.

For Bahzad, the idea of creating color without needing dyes at all is an appealing one.

What started as a straightforward business relationship became something closer through Wonder Looper. Bahzad and Risa grow Foxfibre® varieties on their balcony and are part of a cotton-growing group based in Japan that gets on a call once a month to compare notes. Sally, who has visited them in Japan several times, is part of that same conversation group. They text regularly.

Wonder Looper is now Sally Fox’s largest customer.

“I like knowing the farmer who makes the cotton for your product.” — Bahzad Trinos

Wonder Looper already has plans to incorporate Green Foxfibre® in their spring collection, alongside more of the iron mordant treatment already showing up on the brand’s Foxfibre® French terry, which pushes the naturally tan cotton toward a deeper, rustier cast without the need for dyes.

Finding Color That Was Already There

In the same vein of Foxfibre®, Bahzad and Risa set out looking for other naturally colored fibers that were underutilized.

Yak fiber is very similar to wool in terms of warmth, hand, and drape. What it does differently from wool is that it arrives already colored: a soft brownish gray, straight off the animal. That pulled the duo in.

"It's another way for us to create color without dyeing. We're not opposed to dyeing, of course, we have products that we dye, but there's something about natural colors that sparks a lot of interest in us." — Bahzad Trinos

The yak fiber is sourced from Mongolia and Wonder Looper is mixing it with both Foxfibre® and pima cotton this season to create interesting colors and texture.

It’s another example of the way Bahzad and Risa approach materials. Instead of starting with a color and figuring out how to dye a fiber to get there, they are interested in materials that already bring something interesting to the table.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Wonder Looper has abandoned dyes.

Into the Mud

The recent highlighting of naturally colored fibers doesn’t mean that Wonder Looper is any stranger to dyes. The same way the duo utilize old Japanese chain stitch machines and loopwheel machines, they also keep Japanese heritage front-and-center with their natural dyeing in Amami Ōshima with their dorozome collections.

Dorozome, or mud dyeing, is a labor of love that can only be performed on Amami Ōshima. Threads get soaked in a tannin broth brewed from the tichigi/sharinbai tree, a coastal evergreen that only concentrates enough tannin in Amami’s specific salt-wind conditions. They are then worked by hand through iron-rich mud, then rinsed and returned to the tannin bath.

The process is repeated over and over until the desired color is achieved.

Bahzad mentioned in a recent livestream that they had plans to run Foxfibre® through this process as well. Since Foxfibre® already carries tannins on its own, the sharinbai broth step of the traditional dorozome process would be unnecessary. For some of Wonder Looper’s spring/summer 2027 collection, the plan is to skip the sharinbai step entirely and go straight to mud.

I asked whether their dye house partners pushed back on omitting sharinbai from the traditional dorozome process or the fact that Wonder Looper is asking them to garment dye cotton tees instead of silk skeins for kimonos. Bahzad told me of his close relationship with the craftspeople of Amami Ōshima. The dyers have already moved well past kimono-only work and recognize that preserving a tradition sometimes means applying it to new applications instead of letting it freeze in place and die off.

But it doesn’t mean asking the artisans to compromise their way of life or their timelines.

The dye house’s roof recently collapsed in a typhoon, and Bahzad’s read on it was closer to shrugging than panicking: island life, things break, the work continues when it continues.

He’s deliberate about not stacking projects on people he considers artists first and vendors second. The spring dye collection is in progress and it will be ready when it’s ready.

Old Machines, New Collaborations

Bahzad and Michael Kristy, the creator behind The Iron Snail, go back quite a ways. When Michael put out his first-ever clothing project, a denim jacket, Bahzad coordinated the whole thing through Naked & Famous.

The friendship has held ever since. Michael calls when he has a production question or needs a second opinion for one of his videos, and at some point along the way, Michael gave Bahzad the watch he was wearing during our call.

A collaboration was always somewhere in the back of both their minds. The first idea was wool, since Michael uses a lot of it in his own work, but nothing came of that until a conversation about hoodies, their history, how the garment came to be and evolved into its modern form, turned into the actual project.

Michael is a master of story-telling and loves to tell you about everything he makes, so a hoodie built around the garment’s history fit the two of them better than any wool idea they could come up with.

Bahzad doesn’t hedge when he talks about him: “As a creator, I think he’s probably the best in this space, and the most genuine.” He’s careful to note he’s not knocking anyone else working the same territory, just that something about Michael in particular makes people feel like they already know him, on camera and off.

The Afterhood itself runs on an Azuma knitting machine, not the tsuriami machines Wonder Looper normally uses. Using the Azuma machine is a deliberate step up in speed, and understanding that choice means understanding tsuriami knitting.

Tsuriami machines are vintage, extremely slow, and finite. Three of them run specifically for Wonder Looper full time and they can’t be sped up to accomodate the number of orders coming in. You can’t add machines that don’t exist, and you can’t make an old machine move faster than it was built to move.

“If my purchase order doubles, well, it’s just going to take double the time. They can’t be like, okay, we’re going to go faster.” — Bahzad Trinos

Built during the period when older loopwheel machines transitioned into high-speed sinker machines, the azuma bridges the gap in speed and structure. It’s capable of a similarly puffy, soft, vintage-feel fabric, but faster and cheaper to run. It’s not a downgrade so much as a second dial that lets Wonder Looper tell a vintage-production story on a hoodie without an eight-month wait behind it.

Parts for both the tsuriami and azuma machines come from the same place parts come from for every piece of vintage textile equipment still running: decommissioned machines, scavenged for whatever can be salvaged, with custom fabrication running eighteen to twenty-four months when scavenging fails. Bahzad has been on the other side of that math before. At Naked & Famous, the Montreal factory ran Union Special chain-stitch machines for hemming, and a single replacement bolt, no larger than a thumb, once ran him $750 with zero alternative suppliers. “What are you gonna say? No, you can’t,” he said. “I need that part now. I’m going to pay it.”

What Wonder Looper is Building

I admittedly came into this conversation as a Wonder Looper fanboy. I own several pieces already and when I began writing my series on natural dyes, it felt like an incredible opportunity for me to get a better look behind the scenes with a brand I admire. Bahzad has been a delight to talk to and gave me access to plenty of behind-the-scenes footage that helped me bring my essay on natural brown dyes to life.

Wonder Looper is a heritage-inspired brand that’s taking the craftsmanship of old techniques to unexplored territory. Talking to Bahzad confirmed what I’d suspected from the outside, that it’s not based on market research. It’s their personal curiosity made manifest. It’s what most brands aspire to be before they have to give in and cater to their audience if they want to keep the lights on.

It’s that same curiosity and appreciation for heritage that had Risa learning a dying embroidery craft during lockdown, keeping ancient mud-dyeing techniques alive, exploring naturally colored fibers, and commiting to machines that no one makes parts for.

Wonder Looper still offers that embroidery service for every piece ordered from their website.

The fall collection is out now, and I am particularly excited about the Grandrelle Foxfibre® Henleys, Yak Blend Sweatpants, and Yak Blend Field Shirts.

Spring will bring the Green Foxfibre® release and, if the dye house’s timeline holds, the first Foxfibre® pieces run through Amami mud. I’ll have more on the collection itself soon.

As we relish in the excitment of the FW26 release and look forward to the SS27 release, I think of what Bahzad told me near the end of our call when I asked how he thinks about balancing what the customer wants against what he and Risa want to make: “If we’re excited for it, genuinely, then I think there will be enough of a customer base for us to produce that.”

So far, he’s been right.

There is a piece of cloth from Amami Ōshima, a small Japanese island roughly halfway between Kyushu and Okinawa, that takes over a year to make. Not because of the weaving, though the weaving is extraordinary, but because of the dyeing. The silk threads are dipped in a tannin broth made of wood chips from the Techigi tree, then carried to an iron-rich mud field and pushed through the mud by hand. Then rinsed, dried, and returned to the broth. Then through the mud again. This cycle repeats over and over. The standard count for Ōshima tsumugi, one of Japan’s most prized textiles, is nearly eighty repetitions before the color is considered finished. The final color is black. But for most of that process the threads are a very specific shade of dark, complex brown.

That brown is the result of a tannin–iron chemistry that humans have used, in various forms, on every inhabited continent for at least two millennia. It is the same basic mechanism that produces one of the most durable, most technically demanding, and least glamorous colors in the history of natural dyes.

The Color Left Out of the Story

In the history of natural dyes, brown often gets left out. I covered the exciting history of red at length — cochineal and kermes at the luxury end of the market, the colors of power and prestige. Blue will have its own story too: indigo, the colonial economy of the Indigo Acts, the politics of the Bengal trade. Tyrian purple, also upcoming, bankrupted the Phoenicians and lent its name to an entire category of imperial authority. Brown is the color of the fields, the forest, the ordinary backdrop that everything else was dyed against.

Before anyone dyed anything on purpose, most cloth was already some shade of brown. Undyed wool comes off a sheep brown, grey, or near black depending on the breed. Unbleached linen is a pale tan. Tanned hide is brown. For most of human history, brown fabric required no decision at all. It was simply the story of the ordinary.

“There are various colours of wool; so much so, indeed, that we want terms to express them all. Several kinds, which are called native, are found in Spain; Pollentia, in the vicinity of the Alps, produces black fleeces of the best quality; Asia, as well as Bætica, the red fleeces, which are called Erythræan; those of Canusium are of a tawny colour; and those of Tarentum have their peculiar dark tint.” — Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.73 (43)

And that ordinaryness is misleading. Producing a reliable, lightfast brown from natural materials turns out to be technically demanding in ways the luxury colors are not. Red was hard to find, but once you had cochineal or kermes, the chemistry was relatively cooperative: you mordanted the fiber with alum, applied the dye, and got a stable, brilliant color. Brown is infinitely abundant in nature. Most of the plants that look brown do not produce a stable brown on textile fibers. The plants that do produce stable brown tend to do so through a mechanism that requires iron, and iron is notoriously harsh on protein fibers: it degrades wool and silk over time. The very thing that makes the brown stable is the thing that slowly destroys the cloth.

The technical solutions to brown tell you something interesting about how different cultures understood the relationship between color and material. Each one found a different way to navigate the same problem.

Walnut: The Easiest Brown

Starting with the most ubiquitous brown, the one available everywhere in the temperate world for the longest time: walnut. The active compound is juglone, a naphthoquinone found in the green hulls of black walnut (Juglans nigra), found in North America, and the related species used across Europe and Asia (Juglans regia).

Juglone is a direct dye, which means it bonds to protein fibers (wool and silk) without requiring a mordant. It’s actually more interesting than that, as the walnut hulls are a two-for-one special. The hull of the walnut contains both a high tannin content and the coloring compound. While dyeing cotton requires treating the fabric with a tannin to allow dye bonding, here no pre-treatment is required, allowing the walnut to bind to all types of fibers without additional help. You crush the green hulls, steep them in water, simmer the fiber in the resulting bath, and you get brown. In the context of natural dyeing, this is almost embarrassingly simple.

“Of all the ingredients used for the brown dye, the walnut rind is the best.” — James Haigh, The Dyer’s Assistant, 1778.

Pliny the Elder describes walnut preparations for dyeing wool brown and also mentions walnut juice as a hair dye for darkening gray hair. By the medieval period, walnut-hull dye appears in European dye manuals as a standard material. It’s cheap, available wherever walnut trees grew, requiring no mordant chemistry, and producing a warm, stable brown.

“The green shell of the walnut is used for dyeing wool, and the nuts, while still small and just developing themselves, are employed for giving a red hue to the hair: a discovery owing to the stains which they leave upon the hands.” — Pliny the Elder, Natural History 15.22 (24)

The limitation of walnut is also simple: walnut-dyed cloth, left in sunlight, fades toward a grayer, more muted tone over time. It is not the most lightfast dye in the natural dyer’s toolkit. What it is is accessible. Every culture with access to walnut had a brown dye. The interesting cases are where access to walnut was limited, or where a deeper, richer, cotton-friendly brown was needed, and a different chemistry had to substitute.

Cutch: The Deeper Brown

The darker, more saturated brown comes from a completely different plant family and a different part of the world. Cutch, also called catechu, is an extract from the heartwood of Senegalia catechu (formerly Acacia catechu), a tree native to India and Southeast Asia. Cutch is a direct dye, similar to walnut, but the chemistry is different altogether. Walnut’s juglone is a genuine direct dye in that it bonds protein fiber on its own. Cutch is a tannin that mordants itself. When you dye cotton with cutch, the catechin molecule acts simultaneously as the color and the bridge. It doesn’t need an added mordant because its own polyphenols grip the cellulose the way any tannin would. However, iron is still often added to increase the depth of the color from a yellow-brown.

The heartwood is boiled down to a concentrated paste or dried cake. What you get is a concentrated source of catechin compounds, the same family of molecules found in tea, which is also used as a mordant-free brown dye.

Cutch has been in use in India since ancient times. It produces brown on cotton without any mordant at all, which is very important in a region where silk and wool were not the primary textile fibers. Paired with iron mordants, cutch shifts toward darker brown and near-black shades. By the 1500s, cutch was being exported from India to Japan and China through the maritime trade networks of South and Southeast Asia. It did not reach Europe in significant quantities until the 19th century, when cotton dyeing had become the central problem of the industrial textile trade.

Cutch represents the same pattern we saw with lac and kermes: a high-quality regional solution that was simultaneously dominant within its geography and almost entirely invisible outside it. While European dyers were using walnut for brown, Indian and Southeast Asian dyers had a dye that was better on cotton, more concentrated, and part of a sophisticated commercial trade network. The two traditions were solving the same problem and barely aware of each other.

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Dorozome: Amami Ōshima’s Mud Dye

Dorozome (泥染め, “mud dyeing”) is the process used in the production of Ōshima tsumugi silk on Amami Ōshima. This island sits in Kagoshima Prefecture but culturally in a tradition entirely its own. Ōshima Tsumugi is ranked alongside Gobelin tapestry and Persian carpets as one of the world’s most technically accomplished textiles.

The tannin source is the tichigi tree, known in standard Japanese as sharinbai (Rhaphiolepis umbellata), a coastal evergreen in the rose family. The choice of tree is not arbitrary: tichigi grown on Amami Ōshima, in the island’s specific coastal soil under the salt-wind conditions of the East China Sea, contains unusually high concentrations of tannin. The Ōshima Tsumugi association mandates both the tichigi source and the island’s mud be used. Substitute either, and you cannot call the cloth Ōshima Tsumugi. Until recently, yarn-dyed silk that would be handwoven into fabric for kimonos was the primary focus of dorozome. However, similar to walnut, the high tannin concentrations in the sharinbai mean that this process can dye both protein and cellulose fibers. With the decline of the handwoven silk industry over the last few decades, the dorozome process has become increasingly popular for garment dyeing not only silks, but cellulose-based garments as well.

The preparation required is significant. About 600 kg of sharinbai chips are boiled in a large kettle for more than 16 hours over two days. The resulting dye is then left to cool and ferment naturally for about 10 days, during which microorganisms shift the chemistry from alkaline to acidic and the dye thickens and develops a distinctive smell. This fermentation changes the structure of the tannin compounds and affects how they bind to fibers.

The threads or full garments are then immersed in the tannin broth, wrung out, and taken to iron-rich mud patties on the island. Before immersion in the mud, the sharinbai renders the fabric a gentle reddish brown color. The island mud is worked through the garment or yarn by hand. The tannins imparted into the fiber by the sharinbai react with the iron compounds in the mud, producing the dark iron–tannin color. The threads are rinsed, dried, returned to the tannin bath, and the cycle begins again. This is repeated roughly three to four times per session, and the sessions accumulate until the dyer has reached the desired color. For Ōshima Tsumugi, that means up to eighty sessions.

The result is a color that is neither a simple dye coat on top of the fiber nor a surface treatment. The iron–tannin complex is bound throughout the fiber itself, and the color has a depth that reflects this. The characteristic darkness of dorozome browns and black are unlike anything else.

Bògòlanfini: Shared Chemistry, Different Continent

The comparison with dorozome is striking, and the two traditions were unaware of each other. Bògòlanfini, Bamana mud cloth from Mali, arrives at the same fundamental chemistry: tannin plus iron, applied in sequence, through an independent path.

In the Bamana tradition, men weave narrow strips of cotton that are sewn together, and women dye them. The cloth is first soaked in a dye bath made from the leaves of the n’gallama tree (Anogeissus leiocarpa), a tannin source that leaves the cloth a yellow-brown that is not color-fast. The dyed cloth is left to dry in the sun and then painted with iron-rich mud from riverbeds over the tannin-treated surface. The iron and tannin react, fixing a dark pattern in place. Because the n’gallama dye is not color-fast, the parts of the cloth that were not painted with mud are removed upon washing, leaving behind intricate patterns and motifs.

In Japan, the goal was a deep, even black for luxury silk weaving. In Mali, the goal was a patterned, symbolic cloth that carried social meaning. The Metropolitan Museum describes bògòlanfini patterns as communicating proverbs, songs, and historical events; the cloth was a form of notation as much as decoration. What both traditions share, beyond the chemistry, is a deep engagement with the specific materials of their landscape. Dorozome requires Amami Ōshima’s specific mud and Amami’s specific tree. Bògòlanfini requires the iron-rich mud of Mali’s rivers and the tannin of the Sahel region. Neither technique is portable: you cannot take dorozome to Kyoto or bògòlanfini to Senegal and expect the same result. The geography is a key ingredient in the equation.

Tannins, Iron, and Geography

Underneath walnut, cutch, and the mud-dyeing, the chemistry is the same. Tannins are polyphenolic compounds, and plants produce them in a huge variety, in bark, leaves, galls, heartwood, and seeds. Their job, evolutionarily, is defense: they bind aggressively to proteins, which is exactly what makes an unripe persimmon or a mouthful of strong tea taste chalky and astringent, and exactly what makes them useful on protein fiber like wool and silk. When a tannin encounters iron, whether in soil, in a mordant bath, or in the iron salts dyers have used for centuries, the two form an iron-tannate complex. Those complexes are dark. Depending on the tannin involved and how much iron is present, the result runs anywhere from warm brown to grey-brown to something close to black.

Dorozome and bògòlanfini point to the same chemistry, but it’s the geography that makes both possible. In each case, the place is not just where the dye happens to come from; it is part of the dye itself. Amami Ōshima’s coastal trees and iron-rich mud produce a brown-black that cannot be replicated elsewhere. In contrast, Mali’s river mud and Sahel tannins create a cloth whose meaning is inseparable from the land that made it. The chemistry is shared, but the result is local.

Kakishibu: The Dye That Deepens Over Time

Most dyes develop their color in the bath, through heat and time, and are finished once the cloth comes out. Kakishibu is different. It’s made by fermenting the juice of unripe persimmons, specifically the astringent shibu variety, for months or years, and the result is roughly 95 percent tannin by weight. Unlike everything else we’ve discussed thus far, kakishibu is an oxidation dye: the color continues deepening after the cloth leaves the bath, driven by air and sunlight. Historically, Japanese dyers treated that instability as a feature. They watched a piece change over a week, then a month, then a year.

Kakishibu’s uses span well beyond clothing. For more than seven hundred years, kakishibu has coated fishing nets and farm tools, primed wood ahead of lacquer work, strengthened handmade paper, and preserved furniture as a natural fungicide. In garments, kashibuku has been used in the plain kakiso robes worn during the Heian period by lower-ranking samurai and by yamabushi, the mountain ascetic monks whose entire aesthetic ran against color. Demand collapsed after the Second World War once synthetic alternatives took over most of those jobs. A recent revival, driven by interest in low-toxicity alternatives to synthetic wood and fabric treatments, has brought it back as a working material rather than a museum curiosity.

The Industrial Revolution

In 1863, the German chemist Carl Alexander von Martius described what became known as Bismarck Brown, an azo dye built from a coal-tar diamine and named, in the fashion of the era, after the chancellor. Bismarck Brown never became a serious textile dye. It ended up mostly in the lab, staining tissue samples and mast cell granules, and later as a component of the Papanicolaou stain still used in cytology today. Its one real commercial footnote outside of the science lab was tinting soap amber. If you compare that to what alizarin did to madder farming — thousands of acres converted or abandoned within a couple of decades — the invention of Bismarck Brown barely registers as an economic event at all.

That’s not to say that these natural brown dyes weren’t impacted by the industrial revolution, however. Chrome tanning, patented by Augustus Schultz in 1884 and commercialized by Robert Foerderer’s “Vici” brand in 1889, replaced the vegetable tannins such as cutch that had darkened and preserved leather for centuries, with chromium salts. The adoption curve was brutal by period standards: US goat leather production, the category chrome tanning suited best, grew 1,600 percent through the 1890s while sheep and cattle hide usage grew in the low double digits. One trade writer called it more progress in tanning than any prior decade in the industry’s history. Cutch, which had spent centuries as one half of the standard tanning bath, is recorded as becoming obsolete somewhere between the world wars, which aligns with chrome tanning’s several-decade run to full dominance. Chrome tanning still dominates this market to this day, making up 85-90% of all tanned leathers produced worldwide.

On the cotton side, a separate and unrelated chemistry did the same job in dyeing. The first sulfur dye, developed by Croissant and Bretonnière in France in 1873, was called Cachou de Laval. Cachou and catechu both trace back to the same Malayalam word, kāccu, meaning “to boil” or “to heat”. Sulfur dyes became a workhorse class for cotton, brown included, because they were cheap, washfast, and easy to run at industrial volume. They still are. Sulfur dyeing is being phased out across the West now over pollution concerns, but it runs at full scale in China, which is part of why so much inexpensive brown-dyed cotton in stores today traces back there.

Wool and silk have their own synthetic story running in parallel. Sulfur dyes only work once they have been chemically reduced into a soluble form, and that reduction bath is strongly alkaline and close to boiling. Cotton can tolerate those conditions, but protein fiber doesn’t. That alkalinity will hydrolyze wool or silk’s structure and degrade it. The workhorse class for protein fiber became acid dyes, which bond ionically to the cationic sites that occur naturally in wool, silk, and nylon rather than needing an alkaline bath to fix.

Modern Makers

Walnut is fairly uncommon among artisans due to the availability of cutch, which is considered to be the superior brown dye. But there are still a few brands out there utilizing the ancient tradition. Merely Made has a series of Lazy Shirts dyed with natural products. Lady White Co has announced a walnut-dyed shirt as part of their SS27 collection. HARDENCO has a worker’s jacket hand-dyed in walnut and has made pants from the same material in the past. Solid State Clothing has a t-shirt dyed with locally-foraged walnuts for a very reasonable price.

Indi + Ash has an extensive collection of garments dyed with cutch, which also feature Kala cotton, a cotton variety native to the Kutch region of Gujarat, India. The new 3sixteen collaboration with Blue Owl Workshop features a tee dyed with cutch and denim with a cutch overdye. Tintoreria has a cutch-dyed utility jacket made in partnership with Green Matters Natural Dye Company. The William Frederick Airport Half-Zip is made in collaboration with Soft Goods and dyed with cutch and iron by Cara Marie Piazza.

Dorozome is massive in the heritage menswear space right now. Wonder Looper, who I’ve spoken with extensively in the making of this article, recently put out a dye pack featuring dorozome-dyed tees in varying intensities. Studio D’Artisan has also been doing a lot with dorozome in recent months, everything from tees to linen and boro shirts, to some of the most incredible sashiko jeans you’ll ever see.

Kakishibu had its moment just before dorozome took the market this summer. Graph Zero developed a denim with a kakishibu warp and natural indigo weft. Oni put out a similar concept but with an undyed ecru weft. Studio D’Artisan put out a stunning super slub Type II Jacket for their 45th anniversary. Kaptain Sunshine has a pair of painter’s pants made with a cotton-hemp blend. Y2 Leather put out a horsehide leather jacket tanned with kakishibu. The Kapital Monkey Cisco 5S Jeans are a sashiko topstitched kakishibu denim.

Conclusion

Brown is the color of things that have been weathered, worked, steeped, and left to deepen. It lives in bark and walnut hulls, in tea and tobacco, in mud, tannin, iron, and the darkening of cloth over time. Unlike red, which announces itself, brown accumulates quietly: layer by layer, bath by bath, wear by wear, until the distinction between dye and material begins to blur. Its history is not a record of excess, but of attention — of learning how to make beauty from what the landscape provides, and of discovering that the colors closest to the earth are often the hardest to get right. What brown lacks in spectacle, it makes up for in depth. It is the color of place made visible.

If brown is the color of what settles and deepens, the next step is to look at the colors that emerge from sunlight, flowers, bark, and the golden parts of the natural world.

Next in the Dye Series: Yellow. In the meantime, the Fit Finder is the best way to find denim that fits your body: your actual measurements, not vanity-sized tags.

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Most guides to jeans for guys with big thighs point you toward stretch-blend athletic-fit jeans from mall brands. Adding elastane lets the jeans stretch to accommodate your thighs, so the company doesn’t have to develop a new pattern or use additional fabric. According to market research firm NPD Group, skinny jeans accounted for 48% of men’s trouser sales in 2021, and have thankfully been trending downward since. It can be hard to break the skinny/slim jean habit after wearing the same cut for 10 years. Many manufacturers have kept the same slim cuts and added elastane to change the moniker to “athletic fit.” For the fabric to use the elastane’s elastic properties in the first place, it has to be physically stretched by being pulled taut against your skin. Companies market this skin-tight, elastic-blended fabric as athletic fit to flatter the consumer into thinking that too-tight jeans are actually a positive thing. The addition of synthetic fiber to the fabric compromises the longevity of the garment, a problem exacerbated further by the fact that with the fabric taut against your skin, you’re much likelier to develop holes and tears due to friction. The silver lining here is that these fabric blends usually come at a lower price point.

Athletic-fit jeans can help, but they solve a problem that already had a solution. The original denim options — 1950s Levi’s, 1920s waist overalls, postwar Japanese workwear — were crafted for men doing manual labor and were cut wide, unlike the modern slim tapered jeans that dominate the market. In just ten minutes, you can learn to measure your body and find jeans that are flattering without being skin-tight and built to last for a decade of regular wear.

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How I Built This List

Every choice on this list comes from the Denim Fit Finder, the size-comparison database I built at Indigo & Asphalt. It holds real thigh, waist, rise, and inseam figures pulled directly from the measurement charts brands and retailers publish on their own product pages — nothing here is estimated, interpolated, or crowdsourced. Every row is tied to the exact page it came from, and the date I checked it.

To find the roomiest cuts, I look at the relationship between waist and thigh, not thigh alone — a 34” waist with a 15” thigh and a 30” waist with a 13” thigh can both read as “roomy” depending on what you compare them to. I divide thigh circumference by waist circumference to get a thigh-to-waist ratio for every size of every jean in the database. A higher ratio means more of a jean’s total volume goes to the thigh relative to the waist — a more consistent way to compare cuts across brands than trusting whatever a label calls “relaxed” or “athletic,” since those terms aren’t standardized from one company to the next. Every jean on this list sits in roughly the top 5% of thigh-to-waist ratios across the full dataset.

Two caveats worth noting. First, the data right now skews heavily toward raw and selvedge denim, because that’s the corner of the market I often focus on as a blog centered on craftsmanship. As I add additional brands to the Fit Finder, I expect lists like this one to widen. Second, and more basic: I can only analyze what’s published. If a brand or retailer doesn’t publish a full measurement chart — waist, thigh, rise, the works — on its product page, that jean isn’t in my data and can’t show up on a list like this one, no matter how good the actual fit is in person. Your favorite jean being missing from this list means that I don’t have the data to analyze it, not that it isn’t good. If you find issues with the fit finder or know of a brand that should be added, let me know here.

1. CIOTA Denim Baker Pants

CIOTA was founded in 2019 in Okayama and controls every step of creation — from sourcing raw materials and spinning yarn to weaving fabrics, designing, and sewing. These pants are designed to the specifications of US Navy trousers known as OG-107 fatigues or Baker Pants. Featuring large front and back pockets, this denim is made with Suvin cotton, one of the world’s finest quality extra long staple (ELS) cotton varieties. It’s important to note that these are raw loomstate fabric, which will shrink around 1-1.5 inches in the waist after the first wash. These clock in at a whopping 97% on the thigh-to-waist ratio scale. Full measurements can be found here.

2. orSlow Super Dad’s Fit Denim Pants

orSlow is a Japanese brand known for slow fashion, meticulous replication of heritage denim, and vintage military- and workwear-inspired designs. Dad’s Fit is the brand leaning into the millennial vocabulary: full seat, roomy thigh, a straight leg that doesn’t taper hard at the ankle. This is the only non-selvedge option on this list. The one-wash finish means that further shrinkage will be minimal, so what you see when you try them on is close to what you’ll actually be wearing in six months. It also comes in a Blue in Green exclusive version which is slightly heavier and uses the selvedge denim from their Model 66 line, modeled after the Levi’s 501s from 1966. This one lands at 91% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here. orSlow’s Grand Dad’s fit also scores highly.

3. TCB Baggy 50’s Jeans

TCB (Two Cats Brand, which itself makes me want to buy their product) developed the 50’s jeans as their first pair — an homage to the vintage denim of the 1950s. TCB’s founder, Inoue-san, developed the baggy version of the 50’s after he saw some of his employees sizing up their 50’s jeans to achieve a more relaxed silhouette. This version sports ample room in the top block with a slight taper down to the hem. For me, this is the best balance of price and quality. This pair measures out at 90% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

4. Fullcount 1121 “Duke Denim 3”

Inspired by the Duke of Windsor, this is the third iteration of Fullcount’s signature super-wide silhouette. Made from ultra-soft long-staple Zimbabwean cotton, they feature a roomy top block and a high rise that helps keep the fit loose through the thighs. The oversized back pockets and tonal cotton stitching combined with a goatskin leather patch, copper rivets, and Fullcount buttons strike a balance between heritage craftsmanship and contemporary edge. This pair also scores a 90% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

5. Black Sign 1920s Death Valley Waist-Overalls

These are a reproduction of early 1900s waist-overalls, a term coined by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss in 1873 before the term “jeans” existed. This pair is made with a low-tension weave and subtle textural variations throughout. The cinch back gives it a classic heritage look and lets you dial in the waist without dragging the whole thigh in with it. This pair sits at 89% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

6. Big John M1011RC “Yoshidenim Green Label”

Big John is Japan’s original denim brand — before Evisu, Fullcount, and the rest of the Osaka Five, this was the company that started reproducing American workwear — and the M1011RC keeps to that early relaxed straight heritage cut. The Yoshidenim Green Label fabric introduces an unconventional material with the inclusion of reed fibers sourced from Lake Kojima. The reed fiber gives a subtle texture and enhances breathability. The wide straight leg and high-rise combined with the unusual fabric choice make this a blend of the old denim world and the new. The leather patch with the duck motif is a memorable finishing touch. This one checks in at 88% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

7. Devoa TIME HORIZON Jeans

Before Daisuke Nishida was the creative director at Devoa, he was a professional wrestler. Devoa blends avant-garde and cutting-edge fabrics with heritage silhouettes. The most luxurious option on this list, the Time Horizon jeans combine a unique pattern with a wide silhouette and a much sharper taper than anything else on this list. The detailing here is impeccable – slub cotton with untreated weft yarns, selvedge details on the pockets and waistband, custom aged hardware, and a hem purposely cut and shaped to prevent it from dragging on your heels. This pair ties Big John at 88% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

8. Samurai Jeans S310XX-WASHI Selvedge Denim

Samurai’s 310XX is the widest fit in the brand’s repertoire, and the WASHI fabric — cotton blended with washi paper fiber — gives it a lighter hand at just 15oz, which is almost lightweight considering Samurai’s other offerings. The pair features a high rise, custom buttons, and the leather patch depicts an artisan making washi paper with a traditional sugeta. That matters more for a bigger thigh than it sounds like it should: a lighter weave flexes with your movement from the first wear, instead of standing rigid against your leg until months of walking finally beat it into submission. This pair matches the last two pairs at 88% on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

9. The Flat Head FN-S2003

If you’re newer to raw denim, this is a great place to start. The FN-S2003 is a wide tapered cut from 12oz fabric — the lightest on this list. The Flat Head is known for its minimalist detailing and authentic craftsmanship. The lighter weight means less rigidity through the thigh and knee while it breaks in, making it an easy experience for those looking to upgrade their denim game. This pair finalizes the 88% cluster on the thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

10. Studio D’Artisan SD-D01 “The Origin”

The SD-D01 is Studio D’Artisan’s reproduction of the D01 model, which disrupted the denim scene in 1980s Japan. SDA examined archived pieces to replicate the distinct uneven texture that made this pair so popular in the first place. This pair goes above and beyond standard denim with 20 rounds of natural indigo dyeing using labor-intensive skein dyeing techniques. These feature a wide-straight fit and a cinch-back fastener, allowing you to adjust the waist without impacting the thigh. We finish off the list with an 87% thigh-to-waist ratio. Full measurements can be found here.

What Else to Consider When Buying Denim for Bigger Thighs

Rise. Rise is the distance from the crotch seam up to the waistband. A low-rise jean has less fabric in reserve there, so the moment you sit down and your hips rotate forward, the crotch seam pulls taut almost immediately — and because that seam sits right where your leg meets your torso, the tension drags sideways across the top of the thigh instead of staying put at the crotch. On a bigger thigh, where the fabric’s already working to wrap the leg, that extra pull reads as binding or restriction right at the seam, even when the waist and thigh measure fine standing up. A higher rise gives the crotch seam room to flex with the movement instead of fighting it. Most of the cuts on this list run mid-to-high rise for that exact reason.

Fabric weight. Heavier denim — 15oz and up — takes longer to break in and will feel stiff through the thigh for the first several wears. Lighter weights, 12 to 13.5oz, flex sooner. Neither is wrong; it’s a matter of personal preference. I prefer heavier-weighted denim because of its ability to maintain its structure.

Pattern, not just size. This is where many people go wrong. Sizing up in a slim-cut jean widens the waist first — the thigh barely moves. A straight or relaxed pattern with real room built into the seat and leg, like the Black Sign waist-overalls or the TCB Baggy, actually solves the problem instead of just relocating it to your waistband.

The Takeaway

Pattern is what actually solves this — not sizing up. A cut with real volume built into the seat and thigh gets you room where you need it without dragging your waist two sizes too big just to fit your legs in. These ten are just where the ranking starts — the full roomiest-thighs list runs deeper if you want to keep going, and even includes women’s denim cuts.

Rise and fabric weight decide how that extra room actually wears. A higher rise keeps the crotch seam from fighting you when you sit down instead of just sitting in your lap. A lighter weight breaks in faster if 15oz feels like too much commitment on a first pair. But pattern is what gets you in the door. Get that right, and the rest is preference.

Which pair on this list actually suits you best — or is your favorite denim for bigger thighs not here at all? Tell me in the comments: brand, cut, and whether you sized up from the chart or stayed true to it. If it’s not already in Fit Finder, I’ll measure it.

It shows up in our physiology too: human trichromatic vision may have evolved to spot ripe fruit against foliage, or to read the flush of blood in another primate’s face. We are unusually good at detecting small shifts in redness, which is why blushing, rage, arousal, illness, and embarrassment all read so clearly on a face. Violence and sin, danger and courage, desire and passion — red carries them all. We see red when we are angry, and roll out red carpets when we celebrate.

Culturally, it splits along a fault line: danger and luck, stop and celebration. In China it’s the color of weddings and New Year money; in medieval Europe it was the color of the executioner and of Christ’s passion. In the Sahara, red signaled high status, while in Egypt it could represent danger, desert sands, storm winds, and the god Set. Red ochre appears in burials from at least 90,000 years ago, smeared on bodies at Qafzeh Cave in Lower Galilee — one of the earliest signs that humans were doing something symbolic rather than practical. Before we had writing, we memorialized our dead with red.

It’s one thing to associate language and emotion with red. Creating the color itself proved much harder. Nature offers red freely in blood, flame, and sunset, but rarely in a form that will hold to cloth. A red that stayed red, that didn’t fade to rust in the sun or bleed out in the first wash, required rare resources, long processes, and skill accumulated over generations.

The First Reds

The first red used widely was red ochre — iron oxide (Fe₂O₃) mixed with clay and sand — which produced shades ranging from yellow to deep orange and brown. Cave paintings at Lascaux in France include a horse painted with ochre dating to 17,000 BCE. Around 8,000 BCE, cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide (HgS), became the pigment of choice in Çatalhöyük in present-day Türkiye for burial rituals and wall paintings. Also known as vermilion, it spread across Asia and Europe as the red paint of choice because it was far more vivid and consistent than ochre. But pigments are different from dyes. Red ochre, sometimes known as bengara, could not reliably produce a stable red on cloth, and cinnabar could not withstand sunlight, sweat, rain, or washing. Artists had their reds, but dyers did not.

That changed nearly 5,000 years ago with madder, a coffee relative discovered in the Indus Valley. Madder root, also known as Rubia tinctorum, is a shrubby, unremarkable plant with small yellow flowers that grows across the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Its dye molecules, alizarin and purpurin, are mordant dyes in the anthraquinone family. The roots are grown for several years, then extracted, washed, dried, and ground into a fine powder that yields durable shades of red, pink, and orange.

The final color depends on the concentration of alizarin in the root and the mordant used. Iron saddens the color into purple; tin makes it brighter and warmer; copper cools it toward olive. Alum is what makes madder truly shine. In the early 1700s, a process developed in Asia added lye, castor oil, sheep’s dung, and other ingredients to madder root to produce the brilliant red known as Turkey Red. Where ordinary madder faded or browned, Turkey Red resisted sunlight and washing. The process was so closely guarded that it prompted espionage, as Europeans tried to steal the secret.

For over 5,000 years, madder was the main source for red. It shaped trade routes, medicine, ritual, and art across the Islamic world, medieval Europe, and beyond. In Egypt, madder grew well in the mineral-rich soil along the Nile, and madder-dyed cloth was reserved for elite burials — King Tutankhamun himself was entombed with it. In India, it carried medical significance too, thought in Ayurvedic texts to purify the blood and treat skin ailments.

While madder spread across the Mediterranean and Middle East, another red was developing farther east in the forests of South Asia. Lac is not a plant but a resin — the hardened secretion of the scale insect Kerria lacca, which colonizes tree branches and coats them in a sticky crimson shell to protect its eggs. The color comes from laccaic acid, an anthraquinone compound related to the dye molecules in the bugs we’ll talk about later. It was known in the Indian subcontinent from at least the first millennium BCE. The name lac comes from the Sanskrit lakṣā, meaning “one hundred thousand,” a nod to how many insects it takes to produce a usable batch of dye.

Unlike most reds that came after it, lac didn’t need much persuasion to work on cotton and linen as well as wool and silk. It is also a mordant dye, but it has a natural affinity for plant fibers even before mordanting, which is rare among anthraquinone reds. Lac moved out from India along maritime and overland routes for at least two thousand years, reaching Indonesia, Nepal, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Xinjiang. Depending on the mordant, it could yield anything from soft pink to deep burgundy. The lac bug also produces shelac which acts as a woof finish and sealant, keeping lac valuable long after cheaper reds pushed it out of fashion.

Brazilwood is the reason the country is called Brazil. Portuguese traders found the tree, Paubrasilia echinata, growing so abundantly along the coast in 1500 that they named the territory after it, decades after Asian dyers had already been using a related species, sappanwood (Caesalpinia sappan), for the same red since at least the twelfth century. Both yield brazilin, a nearly colorless compound that oxidizes into the vivid red brazilein on contact with air, and both were far cheaper than kermes or madder. The catch was its durability. The color faded fast in sunlight and washed out just as fast, which made brazilwood a favorite for cheap goods and a running disappointment for anyone who wanted a lasting red.

Kermes came from the other direction compared to lac. Not a resin excreted from a scale insect, but the insect itself — Kermes vermilio, native to the kermes oak across the Mediterranean basin. Its color comes from kermesic acid, another anthraquinone based mordant dye. Traces of it have been found in a cave in Provence dating to the Neolithic, making kermes one of the oldest dyestuffs humans used on cloth, and older than written history by a wide margin.

The insect’s dried, roughly spherical body looks enough like a seed or a berry that Latin called it granum — grain — and the name stuck for another two thousand years. Kermes was the most premium dye available in Europe for millennia, yielding vibrant crimsons much more reliably than madder could. The Hebrew Bible’s scarlet thread and the priestly vestments of the Tabernacle were almost certainly dyed with kermes. Phoenician and Roman traders carried it across the ancient world as one of the most valuable commodities that existed by weight.

Dyers who were disappointed with brazilwood, archil, and lac turned to another set of red dyestuffs, which produced the most vivid and lasting colors of all: oak-kermes, St. John’s blood, and Armenian red. All three were derived from parasitic insects related to lac, and all of them worked best on animal fibers such as wool and silk rather than on plant fibers like cotton and linen. — Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire

Kermes held its position as the premier red of the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds across antiquity and the Middle Ages, prized by Byzantine emperors, Islamic courts, and the wool guilds of medieval Europe. The name comes from the Sanskrit krim-dja, meaning “worm-born,” and then the Persian and Arabic qirmiz, and eventually the English carmine and crimson.

Then, almost overnight, the kermes craze ended because someone found a better bug.

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Regional Traditions

During the time madder, kermes, and lac were established, red dyeing wasn’t a single tradition but several, each built from whatever the local landscape offered. Across the Middle East, madder cultivation spread from Persia through Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent, and Islamic dye guilds kept recipe books specifying exact ratios of mordant, water hardness, and dye-bath temperature centuries before European chemists could explain why any of it worked. Turkey Red takes its name from exactly this world: Europeans encountered it in Ottoman dye houses, and it reached France and England only after decades of industrial espionage in the eighteenth century. India ran two red economies at once. Lac supplied the luxury insect-resin trade running east and south, while madder, grown alongside it, remained a primary red and a medicinal plant. Few places in the ancient world had two independently viable red dyestuffs in the same region.

East Asia took a different route. Safflower, or benibana in Japanese — Carthamus tinctorius — was first domesticated in the Middle East and carried east along the Silk Road into China and then Japan by the seventh century CE. It produces a red so stubborn that dyers had to discard 99 percent of each petal’s pigment to isolate the 1 percent that actually dyes red. The result was staggeringly expensive. During Japan’s Heian period, a single roll of deeply dyed safflower-red cloth was valued at roughly the price of a nobleman’s house, and the color became so bound up with imperial court culture that ladies of the court wore it as rouge as often as they wore it as cloth. Madder (akane) and sappanwood (suō) filled out the cheaper end of the East Asian red palette.

Halfway around the world, with no contact with any of the above, the people of the Andes had already solved the red problem their own way. Cochineal — Dactylopius coccus, the scale insect that lives on prickly pear cactus, or nopal — was being used as a textile dye in Peru since at least 2300 BCE, appearing in the extraordinary weavings of the Paracas and Nazca cultures a full three thousand years before Europe knew the insect existed. The dye migrated north along coastal trade routes into Mexico roughly two thousand years ago, where the Zapotec, Mixtec, and later the Aztec turned it into an agricultural staple: cochineal farmed on nopal orchards, and cochineal paid as tribute to Aztec rulers, recorded by the sackful in pictorial tax registers. The color mattered enough to the Zapotec that their word for red, tlapalli, was also their word for color itself.

The Cochineal Revolution

Everything changed in 1519, when Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico and found marketplaces selling a red more vivid than anything in Europe’s dye vats. By the 1520s, sacks of dried cochineal insects were crossing the Atlantic on the same ships as Aztec gold, and European dyers quickly learned what the Zapotec and Nazca had known for millennia: cochineal was roughly ten times stronger than kermes, gram for gram. A dyer could produce the same depth of color with a fraction of the material and a fraction of the cost. Kermes, the reigning red of the Mediterranean for two thousand years, was functionally obsolete within a generation.

The strength comes down to chemistry: dried cochineal bodies can be up to 20 percent carminic acid by weight — an anthraquinone the insect produces as a predator deterrent — much more concentrated than the kermesic acid in kermes or the laccaic acid in lac. Not only did it produce a more beautiful crimson than the world had ever seen, but it could also do so with a fraction of the dyestuff.

If cochineal satisfied the desire for color in Europe, among Mexicans it met even deeper needs. More than a marvelous dyestuff, cochineal for them was a living legacy from their ancestors, a gift that connected past and present, and a critical source of strength in the battle for personal and cultural survival. — Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire

Europe, for its part, could not figure out what the dyestuff actually was. For decades, the leading theory was that cochineal was some kind of seed or berry — understandable, since the dried, desiccated insect bodies look enough like small grains to have confused people about kermes for two thousand years before it.

Many people in the sixteenth century thought it was a fruit or a nut, or anything but a bug. In 1555 a British traveler called Robert Tomson got permission to visit the new Spanish colonies in the Americas. On his return he declared that: “cochinilla is not a worme or a certaine bushes.” Nearly fifty years later the French writer Samuel de Champlain explained confidently that cochineal “comes from a fruit the size of a walnut which is full of seed within.” — Victoria Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette

Spain had every incentive to let the confusion around cochineal stand. From the moment it started flowing out of New Spain, the crown treated it as a state secret on par with silver, holding a near-total monopoly on production and export out of Oaxaca for close to three centuries. Cochineal became the second most valuable export from the Americas, behind only silver. The secrecy worked for as long as it could: cochineal thrives only on a specific cactus species farmed with specific techniques Spain never wrote down, and the export of live insects was banned outright.

The history of this mad race for cochineal is a window onto another world — a world in which red was rare and precious, a source of wealth and power for those who knew its secrets. To obtain it, men sacked ships, turned spy, and courted death.
— Amy Butler Greenfield, A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire

But the secret couldn’t hold forever. Cochineal crossed the Atlantic on the same treasure fleets that carried Spanish silver and gold, which made it fair game for English and French privateers. The biggest threat came from state-sponsored theft. In 1777, a French botanist named Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville talked his way into Oaxaca false pretenses, learned cultivation methods Spain had spent centuries protecting, and smuggled cochineal-covered cactus pads out to Saint-Domingue. Spain’s formal monopoly held on paper until roughly 1820. Still, by then cochineal was already the dye of cardinals’ robes and British officers’ redcoats, and it had become the world’s first truly global commodity dye market.

Processed with aluminum or calcium salts, carminic acid becomes carmine, the same colorant that still shows up in lipstick, blush, and red-tinted food and drinks today. Unlike synthetic dyes such as Red 40, it can’t simply be listed as a number on U.S. labels — allergic reactions forced the FDA to require it be named directly, as carmine or cochineal extract, rather than folded into a generic “natural color.” Its color-index name is Natural Red 4.

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The Industrial Revolution

In the mid-1850s, the natural dye economy was destroyed by a teenager in a home laboratory.

In 1856, eighteen-year-old chemistry student William Henry Perkin was trying to synthesize quinine from coal tar during his Easter break from the Royal College of Chemistry. He failed at quinine and produced, instead, a thick black sludge that turned out to dye silk a brilliant, stable purple. Perkin patented the substance, mauveine, and accidentally founded the synthetic dye industry.

Mauveine wasn’t red, but it kicked off a rush to see what else coal tar derivatives could make — and chemists went after red next. In 1868, Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann derived alizarin from coal tar and devised a way to synthesize it directly. The first method was too expensive to threaten cochineal or madder. Still, a commercial race followed, and in May 1869 both BASF and Perkin independently landed on a cheaper synthesis workflow using anthraquinone. BASF filed one day before Perkin did. Rather than fight, Perkin and BASF’s founder carved up the market instead, with Perkin taking England.

The scale-up was devastatingly fast: Perkin’s factory produced one ton of synthetic alizarin in 1869, forty tons in 1870, and 220 tons by 1871. Provence, which had built an entire regional economy around madder, collapsed within six years. French madder cultivation had effectively ended by 1875, and the fields around Avignon were replanted with grapevines. Synthetic alizarin had captured more than ninety percent of the market in less than a decade.

Modern Makers

Synthetic dyes won the market, but they never fully replaced the older reds — they just pushed the people still working in them into a smaller, more deliberate corner of the industry.

Cochineal survives in Hosh, a project from Diné weaver and fiber artist D.Y. Begay working with Tom Tarica, hand-dyeing cochineal-red tees and hoodies in Seattle from US-grown cotton. In this rare case, a five-hundred-year-old Indigenous dye tradition and a modern menswear label are the same undertaking, not two separate histories bolted together. Wild Frontier Goods, a two-person plant-dye and leather maker based in Japan, works cochineal into its made-to-order pieces as well.

Madder is still the most widely used of the historical reds in production. Story MFG works it into its pieces, and 3Sixteen and Blue Owl Workshop have worked together to release madder-dyed tees and overdyed denim.

Lac shows up in Industry of All Nations’ Clean Clothes line, dyeing cotton crimson and burgundy with the resin. This is about as close as the market gets today to what a lac-dyed cloth would have looked like in first-millennium India.

Bengara is different: it’s not a dye but an iron-oxide pigment rubbed into cloth. Even so, it’s the most common of these reds in current production. Japanese denim and workwear makers including Studio D’Artisan and The Flat Head use bengara-dyed pieces, which means the oldest red humans ever used on cloth is also the easiest one to buy right now.

Kermes has no modern equivalent that I’ve been able to find. It’s the one truly lost red — the dye that ruled the Mediterranean and Islamic worlds for two thousand years, undone within a generation by an insect from across the ocean, and never revived. What survives is the language: carmine, crimson.

Conclusion

Red has always meant more than color. It carries blood and longing, danger and ceremony, power and devotion, which is why people have spent centuries chasing it, guarding it, stealing it, and trying to make it last. The history of red dye is the history of a desire made material: trade routes, hidden recipes, smuggled insects, industrial secrets, and the impulse to turn feeling into something you can hold in your hand. Red endures because it is never just decorative; it is one of the oldest ways we’ve learned to make intensity visible. If red is the color of force, then brown and green tell us something quieter but no less essential: how color settles into earth, leaf, bark, fiber, and soil, and how the natural world so often makes its most beautiful hues by layering one thing over another. We’ll discuss those next.

He did not move into a proper workshop because he ran out of space. He moved because he realized how noisy he was being and didn’t want to disturb his neighbors.

Roy Slaper died on July 13th, 2026, according to his friends, at age fifty-five. The cause has not been made public, and I am not going to speculate about it. What I want to do instead is tell you how he worked, because a week out, the internet has mostly failed at that. The first page of results for his name is currently an abyss of auto-generated obituary pages, all recycling the same paragraph and several openly fishing for traffic on how he died. The man himself cut and sewed every garment that carried his name. He deserves a better record than that.

Roy’s origin story is not about starting a business. He bought his first machine from a man named Richard, who refused to complete the sale until he understood what he was dealing with. Roy told the story to Leafbox in 2010, when almost nobody outside forums knew who he was:

“He said, ‘Wait, wait, wait — why are you doing this?’ What he wanted to know was whether I was motivated by money or if, as he put it, ‘Ok, good, you’re doing it for the love — because if you’re not, you won’t make a penny.’ The truth is that I didn’t know why I was doing it. I was just very driven toward making the jeans. You’re hungry and you eat.”

You are hungry, and you eat. I’ve been thinking about that ever since I found that interview again last week. It has to be one of the least romantic possible accounts of a passion project. Still, it is an extremely honest one. There’s no grandiose origin story, no mission statement, no founder narrative about noticing a gap in the market that only he could fill. He felt a compulsion to create, and so he did. One of his early influences, Tilden Yamamoto of Tilden Jeans, now cites Roy as one of his influences, taking note of Roy’s patterns, fit, and construction methods, and even taking on some of his sewing machines.

Roy was not a designer who learned to sew. He was a fabricator with roughly ten years of experience in metal, who found that steel and cloth ask the same questions. His own framing was that both require spatial thought, pattern making, and the measurement of irregular objects.

That background is why Roy could do that others could not. When a machine would not operate the way he wanted it to perform, he did not look for a different machine or design around the limitation. He modified the machine. His shop was a row of black heads with gold lettering, arranged in the order the work moved through them, each one tuned or altered for exactly one job — a belt loop machine, a bar tacker to anchor them, a keyhole buttonholer, a specialty overlock for edges, an embroidery head for the logo he drew himself. He built the tooling that produced it all.

He preferred old machines, and not for the reason you would assume. Not for the romance and authenticity of the old ways; he just thought they formed a better stitch. He got the advice early from a man named Billy at Apparel City: buy vintage, because the steel was better then. He decided Billy was right and never really revisited it.

“To me, making clothing, designing, sewing and machine repair are all one subject. Getting a total basket case machine and fixing it, is right up there on the beauty scale. Second, maybe, only to finding it in the first place. Digging through some basement and finding one of my precious little heaps, that’s the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Asked about his crafting in that same 2010 interview, he stopped to object to the term. Craft, he said, used to mean the culmination of years of practice and training, expressed and visible in the finished piece — something you either had accumulated or had not. He thought it had been reduced to glue guns and bad DIY, and he called it a “dead term to anyone doing quality, professional work.” He noted, with evident satisfaction, that Oxford had marked the word as archaic.

One of the most revered artisans in American denim did not want to be called an artisan. He wanted the work to be described accurately, which is a different and much harder request.

Let’s briefly look at what he actually made. He started making jeans in his apartment in 2007 and was selling them around 2010. Roughly 150 pieces per run, start to finish, every step his own: from patterns, cutting, sewing, finishing, and graphics. He was working at capacity in the realest sense: there were no more hours available in the day.

Roy was one of a very small number of individuals who ever persuaded Cone Mills’ White Oak plant to weave a collaborative fabric to his specification. That was Black Seed: a 13.5oz denim with a short-staple cotton warp and a Supima weft. It remains one of the most sought-after denims ever made in the USA, which is a sentence he would probably find faintly embarrassing.

He defended Cone Mills, at length and with some heat, against the reflex that Japanese denim was automatically the superior article. He argued that Cone was not trying to produce the same effects, not the slub, not the fast dramatic fade, but a more uniform cloth that developed character slowly and did not announce itself. Reading his description back now, it’s hard to miss that he is also describing his own work, and possibly himself: understated, never flashy, and full of decisions you only find if you go looking.

I never met him. I never owned a pair of ROY Denim. Kiya Babzani, one of the founders of Self Edge, knew him well. Self Edge carried Roy’s work, and the two of them worked together for over ten years, which in this trade is most of a career. Kiya’s tribute this week is the best short description of the man anyone is going to write, and it is not about his garments:

“He was truly a one-of-a-kind human, the kind that kept digging even though he already knew enough; didn’t matter if it was vintage sewing machines, baseball stat facts, Oakland skate spots, or open water swimming. He went in deep, every time.”

The kind of person that kept digging even though he already knew enough. Taken together with what he told Leafbox sixteen years earlier — “you’re hungry, and you eat“— and you have a complete picture of the man Roy was. Whatever that appetite was, it was not specific to denim.

Kiya also mentions his sense of humor, which he describes as unhinged in the best way possible, and which you can hear in the interviews if you know how to listen for it. Asked in 2010 which single machine he would take to a desert island, Roy said a treadle-powered single-needle lockstitch, because there would be no electricity, and then added that it would be handy because those castaways always get to looking so ratty.

Roy would not hire anyone. He went back and forth on it for years, and the reasons he gave were partly financial and logistical, which they always are, but the real one sat deeper: Roy Jeans was an embodiment of Roy. Every judgment call inside the garment was his judgment. Adding hands would have made it a different object, and he could not find a way to want that.

What he said he wanted instead came out in 2013, sounding like it had surprised him on the way up: apprentices. Not employees, but people willing to spend the years it would take to actually learn what he had learned, so the techniques would keep existing after him.

In 2021, he announced he had shut down ROY Denim. The market’s response to a maker stepping back was to bid up what he had already made. A decade of accumulated knowledge and technique walked out of the room with him, while his back catalog appreciated. In 2023, Roy took his remaining sewing machines and shipped them from his Oakland shop to Japan to set up a sewing studio at Buaisou Farm. He had also recently been working with Tilden Jeans, who have been using fabric made specifically for Roy for some of their current pieces.

This past May, two months before he died, Heddels ran a fade feature on a pair of Roy’s RS1 straights. Fifteen years old, somewhere around twenty washes. Still in rotation, sashiko patches keeping a piece of history glued together.

Roy Slaper built things to outlive him, and they have. There are pairs of his in closets right now that will be here in another twenty years, going quietly on without him, exactly as designed.

If you own a pair, wear them.

While I do appreciate Sick Fades©, my philosophy to achieving them has evolved over the last decade. I’m not alone in that outlook. Even Bryan Szabo, the founder of the Indigo Invitational and writer at Denimhunters, tested the no-wash dogma and concluded it didn't matter nearly as much as people claimed. The person who built the institution, using his own competition’s results, told his community that the common understanding of fading was silly.

None of that seems to have slowed the ritual down. The no-wash badge still functions the way it always has — proof of commitment, an indicator of who’s serious and who isn’t. There are no rules to wearing denim; it’s just the community grading itself against a self-imposed authenticity barrier.

The obsession with fading and proving your commitment doesn’t just stop at washing your jeans. Manufacturers have capitalized on this “rule” and it shows up in fabric weight. Heavyweight denim (usually 16oz and up) means thick, stiff fabric that creates sharp, deep creases that rub away the indigo intensely at friction points, resulting in quick, dramatic fades. Iron Heart’s 21/23oz UHR and 25oz XHS, reportedly stiff enough that the sewing needles snap while constructing it, sell out season after season. This year, Samurai has released their own 25 oz S510XX jeans and Naked and Famous released a comically heavy 40 oz jean, dubbed the “world’s heaviest denim”. Nothing about denim that heavy is practical. What it offers is credibility: the willingness to endure the painful break-in process is a badge of honor and authenticity.

None of this is an argument against loving the process. Watching a pair take shape slowly is most of the appeal for a lot of people, and there’s nothing wrong with choosing to do it the hard way if that’s genuinely what you want. But, as has been demonstrated by Indigo Invitational participants, dirty jeans is not a requirement to achieve Sick Fades©. You’re not any less legitimate for washing your jeans.

Do whatever the hell you want with your jeans.

The part of the denim fade discourse that bothers me is the fact that it focuses so narrowly on one aspect of the denim. Ironically, the obsession with proving authenticity distracts from the very thing that separated raw selvedge denim from something you pick up at target: the craftsmanship. It doesn’t acknowledge the creativity or inspiration that went into developing the slubby texture, the decades of hand sewing garments, the time spent sourcing hundred year old looms, or the dyehouses that have been practicing for centuries that put weeks into rope dyeing the cotton. A refusal to wash the sweat, dirt, and grime off of the fabric compromises the labor put into the manufacturing process and undermines the $500 you spent on a quality pair. Denim was originally workwear. It was designed to survive hard labor, repeated washing, and years of abuse — not turned into a test of moral character. Wash your jeans. Appreciate the craft. The fades will come anyway.

In 2010, Esquire sent reporter Abram Sauer to the mall with a tape measure. He bought “size 36” pants from five different stores and measured the actual waistbands. The worst offender came in at 41 inches, a full five inches of flattery sewn into the size tag. That was more than fifteen years ago, but the underlying problem hasn’t gone anywhere. It has just gotten more expensive.

A tagged 34 in unsanforized loomstate cloth might measure 36 at the waistband because it’s expected to shrink. A tagged 34 in a slim cut might measure a true 34 and punish you for believing your mall size. Across the database I’m about to describe, a size 34 is measured anywhere from 31 inches at the actual waistband to 38 inches. Same number on the tag but seven inches of disagreement in the cloth.

That’s why it’s so important to measure garments instead of trusting labels, and it’s why every serious denim shop publishes measurement charts. But those charts live on a thousand separate product pages, in inconsistent formats and methodologies, and they vanish when the product sells out. The knowledge exists; it’s just not accessible.

So I built the thing I wanted to exist: the Denim Fit Finder. It’s a free, searchable database of actual garment measurements (293 models and all their sizes across 50 brands as of this week) with no affiliate links or ads.

What’s Actually in the Fit Finder

Every row is a real measurement of a real garment, published by a retailer who put tape to cloth: waist, front rise, back rise, thigh, knee, leg opening, inseam, per tagged size. Nothing is estimated, interpolated, or crowdsourced.

The database draws from two kinds of sources: retailers that measure garments in-house and brands that publish complete measurement charts. Each model is assigned a single designated source, so the measurements remain internally consistent rather than mixing different methodologies.

That distinction matters. Self Edge measures thighs one inch below the crotch seam, while Okayama Denim measures directly at the seam. Neither approach is wrong, but averaging the two would create a number nobody actually measured. Every row links back to its original source so you can verify the data yourself.

Sold-out and archived cuts will stay in the database on purpose because most of the time you’re not matching what’s in stock this week, you’re trying to match a pair you already own.

How to Use the Fit Finder

Using the Fit Finder starts with the pair of jeans that already fits you best. Grab a tape measure, lay the jeans flat, and record the handful of measurements that matter: waist, front rise, back rise, thigh, knee, leg opening, and inseam. Ten minutes later, you’ll know more about how your favorite pair fits than you ever will from a size tag.

The tool has three ways to explore the data.

Find Similar is the heart of it. Enter the measurements of a pair you already own, and every cut in the database is ranked by how closely it matches. Rise and thigh carry the most weight because they’re the hardest dimensions to alter and often determine whether a jean works at all.

Compare puts up to four cuts side by side, highlighting where they differ. It’s the quickest way to see whether two jeans that look similar on paper actually fit the same way.

Browse & Filter lets you explore the entire database by brand, cut, or measurement range. Whether you're searching for a roomier thigh, a higher rise, or simply wondering who still makes your favorite silhouette, it's all there.

One limitation to keep in mind: unsanforized fabrics are listed pre-shrink, exactly as the source measured them. The tool does no shrink modeling, because shrink varies by fabric, water temperature, and how brave you are with the dryer. However, the entry is noted as unsanforized when so described in the product description.

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What Building it Taught Me

The biggest thing this project taught me is that I spent years asking the wrong question. I kept asking, "Which brands are good for bigger guys?" The better question is, "Which measurements work for my body?" Once you realize your favorite jeans aren't special because they're made by Brand X but because they have a 12-inch front rise and a generous thigh, shopping gets dramatically easier. The search will become less frustrating and a lot more successful.

The Rules Governing the Data

The database follows a few rules that I don’t bend.

Measurements are never averaged between sources. Every model uses one designated measuring source because combining charts with different methodologies creates numbers that were never actually measured.

Missing data stays missing. If a retailer doesn’t publish a back rise, the database leaves it blank instead of estimating.

Questionable measurements stay visible but are flagged. The goal isn’t to “correct” published data—it’s to document what was published while making potential issues transparent.

Finally, every row includes both the source URL and the date it was last verified. Fits change over time, and stale data should never pretend to be current.

There’s now a changelog on the “About the Data” tab, too, so you can see exactly what was entered into the database and when. Since the site went live on Sunday, I’ve added about 900 new rows across two retailers and two direct-to-consumer manufacturers.

What the Database says About the Customer Base

Collecting this much data also exposed something I think most of us knew, but is important to call out: the market simply isn’t built for everyone.

Of the 293 models currently indexed, 40 percent stop at a tagged size 38 or smaller. Only 19 percent reach a 42, and just one model in the entire database goes to a tagged 50.

But the numbers tell a more nuanced story than “brands don’t make bigger jeans.” They also reveal how dramatically fits differ within the same tagged size. A size 34 can have anywhere from a 10-inch to a 16-inch front rise, and thigh measurements vary by more than four inches. The sizing cliff is a real problem for bigger guys, but so is the escape route: wider cuts and generous rises are available, they’re just scattered across multiple websites that no one has compiled.

Where We Are Going

In the near term, new updates will be made roughly bi-weekly, each documented in the changelog. The request line is open. If there’s a manufacturer or store you want cross-indexed, send me an email (fitfinder@indigoandasphalt.com) or leave a comment, and if they publish real measurements (or a shop that carries them does), I will add them to the backlog. This week’s additions all started as reader suggestions.

The Fit Finder is already useful, but I don’t think it’s finished. A few of the improvements I’m working toward:

1. Ratios: Thigh-to-waist and rise-to-inseam ratios say a lot about how a cut will sit on a bigger frame. The data to compute them is already in every row; the interface for filtering by them isn’t built yet.

2. Deeper coverage of the gaps the data exposed. The 42-and-up shortlist is embarrassingly short. Documenting it properly and pressuring it to grow by talking about those who pattern generously is a goal of mine.

3. Keeping the verify dates honest. Re-verification passes on the oldest rows will happen quarterly. A confidently wrong number is worse than no number.

4. Enhancing the user experience. The UI for the compare tab is a little clunky at the moment and I am exploring avenues for visualization that make it easier to interpret. I’m also working to allow comparison between different sizes instead of being locked into comparing garments of the same tagged size.

What the Fit Finder is not: a shop, a price tracker, or a database of user-submitted estimates. No affiliate links, no sponsored placement in the results. If a number is in the database, it’s because a retailer or manufacturer measured the garment and published it, and you can follow the link to check their work.

The Fit Finder is free and lives at indigoandasphalt.com/fit-finder.

If it saves you from one expensive mistake, there’s a tip jar. More valuable than that, though, is your feedback. Please send me any and all bugs, issues, refinements, or future ideas to fitfinder@indigoandasphalt.com.

Reference tools only become trustworthy when people try to break them. That's how this one gets better.

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Politician and lawyer Daniel Webster popularized the phrase in the mid-19th century, using it to paint a political opponent as unyielding as the dye in unspun wool.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about the chemistry of how dye bonds to fiber and how different fibers call for different dye classes. That’s only half the story. The other half is timing. At what point in a garment’s life does the dye actually go in?

The timing of adding dye can explain why two shirts of the same color can age and fade in completely different ways. It’s worth understanding these techniques and how they impact the resulting garment.

Unlike the first two pieces in this series, this one is more of a quick-reference guide than a long-form essay. I’m going to walk through each dyeing process from earliest to latest in the garment’s lifecycle, with a summary comparison at the top and the details below.

Stock Dyeing

Also known as fiber dyeing, this process involves dropping loose, unspun fiber into a pressurized vessel and soaking it thoroughly before any twist is introduced. Nothing stands between the dye and the fiber yet: no yarn structure, no weave, nothing for the color to fight past to get in. This technique is what “dyed in the wool” is describing. Dyed and undyed fiber, carded (detangled and cleaned wool) together before spinning, produce heather and tweed effects that can’t be achieved with a single dye bath. Harris Tweed’s depth comes from this technique: black and natural white fibers, blended before the threads are formed.

Top Dyeing

A more specific version of the same idea, top dyeing is specific to long-staple wool. Top dyeing utilizes combed, parallel sliver wool. A sliver (rhymes with “diver” in textile terminology) is a loose, untwisted rope of fiber, the intermediate stage between carding/combing and actual spinning. “Parallel” means the fibers have been combed straight so they lie mostly in the same direction, unlike carded fiber, which is more randomly jumbled.

When all tops are dyed the same color, it produces a deep, consistent shade valued in fine suiting. When tops of different colors are separately dyed and then blended before spinning, the resulting yarn has a marl or melange appearance. In that case, the top dyeing enables the color variety, while the blending creates the visual effect.

Yarn Dyeing

In yarn dyeing, the fiber has already been spun into yarn but not yet turned into fabric. Yarn dyeing is the only technique that allows stripes, plaids, and checks to be built in: the color has to be part of the warp and weft before weaving, not just printed on afterward.

Hank dyeing, package dyeing, space dyeing, and beam dyeing are all forms of yarn dyeing.

Hank dyeing

Also known as skein dyeing, this method involves winding yarn into loose hanks or skeins (open loops of fabric) that are hung over a bar and fully submerged in an open dye bath. Instead of mechanically agitating the yarn (which would tangle or felt it), a circulation pump moves the dye solution through the loose loops.

Famous for its applications with denim and indigo, the yarn usually undergoes repeated dip–rinse–redip cycles, sometimes extending to 48 hours, until the target color is achieved. Then it’s steamed to fix the dye and set the color.

Because the yarn is never compressed or wound tightly, the dye reaches every strand evenly, and the fiber keeps a lofty, soft feel. That’s why this method dominates hand-knit yarns and artisan wools, where feel is as important as the color.

Package dyeing

In package dyeing, yarn is wound onto a perforated tube (the “package”) at a very specific, controlled density: dense enough to hold its shape, loose enough for dye solution to flow through.

Multiple packages are stacked onto a spindle and compressed or bolted together into a single column. That column goes into a pressurized vessel where dye solution is forced through from the inside out, then periodically reversed to flow from the outside in. The compression onto the package leaves a mark, though. Yarn wound tight on a package comes out slightly firmer and flatter than yarn dyed loose in a hank. That doesn’t matter much for woven fabrics, so package dyeing is the standard way to color yarn for woven garments at scale.

Think of it as an industrial-scale, computer-controlled version of what hank dyeing achieves through long soak times. The forced, bidirectional circulation is a replacement for time and hand agitation.

Space dyeing

Here, most commonly, yarn is first knitted into a tube, printed with color using engraved rollers, and then unraveled back into yarn. Because dye can’t penetrate where the yarn crosses over itself inside the knit structure, unraveling reveals alternating dyed and undyed segments. The “spacing” in space dyeing is a side effect of the knit geometry.

The payoff is controlled irregularity: color that shifts too unpredictably to read as a pattern. You see it in marled socks and flecked sweaters that look hand-dyed at a machine-made price. It’s the choice when a maker wants visual texture without the cost of blending separately dyed fibers back at the stock stage.

Beam dyeing

In beam dyeing, warp yarn is wound onto a large perforated beam, laid out in parallel, in exactly the order it will be used for weaving. The whole beam then goes into a dye tank where liquor is pumped through the perforations, alternating in and out under pressure and heat.

There are two main variants:

• Beam dip dyeing: The beam is fully submerged.

• Beam pad dyeing: Dye solution is forced through under pressure without full immersion, closer to padding (see below) than soaking.

The advantage is more than just even color. Because the yarn is wound under tension and doesn’t need to be rewound or re-ordered afterward, the beam goes straight to the loom. That preserves the exact warp sequencing, which is crucial when the warp and weft need to end up in different colors.

In the finished garment, the two directions of the weave disagree about color, such as in end-on-end shirting, and iridescent fabrics that flash a second color when they move. That effect only works if every warp thread holds its exact position from dye tank to loom, which is precisely what the beam preserves.

Rope Dyeing

Rope dyeing is used for denim. Bundles of several hundred warp yarns are gathered into a thick rope, dipped into indigo, pulled out to oxidize, and then dipped again, sometimes a dozen times or more.

Each dip is short, so the dye mostly coats the surface of each yarn, leaving the cotton core white. That’s the structure behind every dramatic, high-contrast raw denim fade. Abrasion doesn’t create new color; it just exposes the white core that was sitting a fraction of an inch beneath the surface. I talk more about this process in Part 1 of this series and on Instagram.

Slasher dyeing

Like rope dyeing, slasher dyeing is used for denim, but it’s a continuous, high-speed line process rather than a batch process. The yarn unwinds flat, passes through caustic wash boxes to prepare the fiber, then runs through a series of five or more indigo troughs.

Each trough repeats the same three-step cycle used in rope dyeing:

1. Impregnation: The yarn dips into the leuco-indigo bath.

2. Squeeze: Rollers press out the excess solution.

3. Oxidation: The yarn is exposed to open air, and the leuco-indigo turns blue.

The key difference from rope dyeing is geometry. Because the yarn is flat and spread out rather than bundled into twisted ropes, each pass exposes it for less time, and the dye barely gets past the surface. Slasher-dyed denim tends to fade to a shallower, duller shade as a result.

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Piece dyeing

Here, a finished bolt of woven or knit fabric is dyed as a roll before it’s cut into garments. Piece dyeing is the industrial default for solid colors at scale: efficient, consistent, and Pantone-matchable.

Most mid-range basics are piece-dyed. The color usually sits shallower than anything dyed at the yarn stage, and it tends to fade more evenly and less dramatically.

There are four main methods of piece dyeing:

Winch/beck dyeing

The bolt of fabric gets sewn end-to-end into a loop and loosely bunches into “ropes”. The fabric runs in rope form through the dye bath, looped continuously over a reel. This is a similar idea to rope-dyed yarn, just with fabric instead of yarn. It’s gentle and used mainly for knits. The fabric keeps its original softness and fullness because it’s never held under much tension.

Because it’s bunched into a rope, though, uneven folds can leave crease marks if the fabric isn’t handled carefully in the bath.

Jig dyeing

Same basic idea as winch dyeing, but the fabric is held flat and at full width on rollers rather than bunched into a rope. Jig dyeing is the standard for medium-to-heavy, tightly woven fabrics like corduroy and canvas, precisely because keeping the cloth flat avoids the crease-mark risk that rope form carries on heavier goods.

Jet dyeing

The fabric sits in a heated, pressurized tube while jets of dye solution blast through it at high pressure, continually recirculated as the fabric moves along.

Jet dyeing uses the high temperatures required for many synthetic fibers, but it can also be used for natural fibers when those conditions are appropriate. This is the technique behind most solid-color synthetics and blends such as performance fleece, technical shells, and poly-cotton basics. It’s chosen when the fiber demands high heat and the order demands speed. The result is even, saturated color on fabric that never fades.

Pad dyeing

The fabric runs through a dye trough, then between heavy squeeze rollers that force the dye in and push the excess out, all in open width. There’s no batching and no looping, just continuous throughput.

This is the efficiency workhorse behind mass-market basics. That efficiency is the main reason piece dyeing is the cheapest option at industrial scale. The color sits shallowest in the fabric of any method in this guide, which is fine for a garment meant to be replaced, limiting for one meant to be kept.

Garment dyeing

Garment dyeing is the last stop in the chain. The piece is fully sewn — seams, pockets, stitching, everything — before it goes into the dye bath.

This isn’t really a shortcut so much as a different goal. Seams and stress points take dye differently than flat panels, so the finished garment comes out with an irregular, already-worn character on day one. It’s also the only method that lets a maker defer the color decision until the last moment. The maker can cut and sew in undyed cloth, then dye to order once they know what’s selling. The irregular character is aesthetic, but the flexibility is good for business.

Stone Island built an entire identity on this, dyeing fully constructed jackets so the color pools differently at every seam and stress point. No two pieces leave the bath identical, and that’s the point.

Timing, depth, and fading

The earlier the dye meets the fiber, the fewer structural obstacles — twist, weave, seams — stand between the dye and full, even penetration. Depth of penetration is depth of color, and depth of color determines whether something fades gracefully over the years or looks tired after a season.

Late-stage dyeing isn’t bad. It simply trades permanence for character, on purpose. There’s nothing wrong with that trade as long as you are making it intentionally.

“Dyed in the wool” survived as an expression because people understood a universal truth: what goes in early tends to stay - whether that be in fabric or life philosophy. But textiles also remind us that permanence is only one kind of beauty. Sometimes the most interesting garments are the ones designed to change — to absorb wear, movement, and time into their color. One method is not superior to another, it just depends on what life the manufacturer wants the garment to take on.

Next in the series: the piece Part Two promised. Cochineal, madder, kermes — the red dyes worth fighting over, and the people still utilizing them today.

Every Japanese denim brand of note weaves a colored thread, known as the selvedge ID, into the finished edge of its denim fabric. Reproduction brands tend to stick to red — a quiet homage to the Levi’s redline that started the whole denim obsession. Pure Blue Japan uses blue thread. It’s a small detail, easy to miss, but it’s downstream of a much larger decision the brand made early on: not to spend its life reproducing someone else’s jeans. While most of Okayama was taking apart vintage Levi’s stitch by stitch to replicate the original, Pure Blue Japan founder Kenichi Iwaya was trying to move further away from it.

Iwaya grew up in Okayama, a prefecture of Japan that has spent half a century quietly becoming the world’s denim capital. His entry point into the denim world was his older brother, who loved vintage Levi’s jeans. He rubbed them down with a pumice stone to chase the fades he saw in well-worn pairs. Levi’s are the gateway drug that every denim obsessive in Japan shares. What’s less ordinary is the path Iwaya took afterward. Before he ever cut a pattern, he worked in textile sales, which put him inside the factories rather than outside them. He understood the machinery and the supply chain before he understood garment construction. In 1997, at twenty-five, he founded the company that would become Pure Blue Japan with, in his own words, “literally no knowledge about fashion production.” His first patterns, drawn by hand with no formal training behind them, he has since described — flatly, without self-pity — as absolutely terrible. The brand that exists now is the result of a couple hundred iterations of that terrible first draft.

The company didn’t start life as Pure Blue Japan. It started as Shoaiya, a name pulled from shoai — the term in Tokushima for indigo dyeing done the old way, with real Ai plant and no shortcuts. It’s a beautiful name but unintelligible outside Japan, which Iwaya understood early. He wanted something that could travel, something that read as both literal and a little poetic in any language, and landed on Pure Blue Japan — three words that do the job a four-character Tokushima dialect couldn’t. The blue selvedge thread follows directly from that renaming.

What actually separates Pure Blue Japan from the dozen other respected Okayama houses isn’t the name. It’s the details. “Slub” is irregularity in the yarn itself — slight thickenings and thinnings along its length that show up in the woven cloth as a rough, uneven, almost handmade-looking surface, the opposite of the flat, consistent face most denim is engineered to have. Pure Blue Japan runs its cloth through customized old looms, slowed down further than the already-slow shuttle-loom standard, specifically to chase that irregularity rather than iron it out. It’s a deliberate inversion of what most mills spend their effort trying to eliminate. Iwaya frames the brand’s relationship to slub as a genuine claim of priority, not just a stylistic preference, and reaches for an unlikely comparison to make the case: “In the case of hamburgers, the teriyaki burger is a good example of something that did not originally exist in the traditional hamburger lineup, yet it was created, spread globally, and eventually became so widely recognized that it feels as if it had always been part of the category. Denim is similar. Elements such as strongly slubbed yarns and distinctive fabric textures — things that did not exist in the past — have become increasingly appreciated, and are now considered important characteristics of denim. We believe we were among the early pioneers in developing slub fabrics, and we intend to continue pursuing that direction.” It’s a strange comparison until you sit with it: a regional variation, invented to suit local taste, eventually becomes so embedded in the category that nobody remembers it was ever a deviation. That’s the position Pure Blue Japan is establishing with slubby denim.

Iwaya is direct about why he built it this way instead of doing what nearly everyone else in his generation of Okayama denim makers was doing — reverse-engineering vintage Levi’s down to the rivet. “About 30 years ago,” he told me, “there were already many brands that were taking apart and analyzing vintage Levi’s jeans, seeking to reproduce products originally made with the limited technology of the time by utilizing modern manufacturing techniques. The level of accuracy they achieved was remarkably high. However, I did not feel that I wanted to follow the same direction. Because the brand was called Pure Blue Japan, I wanted to create ‘Japanese jeans’ conceived through Japanese sensibilities and brought to life through Japanese craftsmanship and techniques.”

That’s the whole philosophy. Not American repro filtered through Japanese precision — something built from a different set of instincts entirely. You see it in the small identity markers too: an indigofera leaf embroidered on the back pocket instead of the arcuate stitching every brand seems obligated to imitate, and a deerskin patch depicting a man dipping jeans into an indigo vat. Not a cowboy or a rancher, but a dyer.

The standard lines use synthetic indigo, a distinction the brand is straightforward about rather than defensive. The denim for the standard line is dyed using standard rope-dyeing techniques. Rope-dyeing twists hundreds of warp yarns into a bundle and runs it through repeated brief dips in indigo, alternating with air exposure that oxidizes the dye from green to blue. The color builds up in thin layers on the yarn’s surface while the core stays white. For the brand’s aizome (AI) pieces, Pure Blue Japan maintains a long-term relationship with Tokushima-based shokunin who hand-dye the yarn using hank-dyeing rather than rope-dyeing, dipping loose skeins by hand instead of running bundled rope through a mechanized vat. It’s slower and harder to scale, but necessary as natural indigo requires longer immersion than synthetic indigo. This process also introduces more tonal variation because the hanks are not uniformly exposed to the dye vat as they would be if assembled into ropes. Sukumo, the fermented dye base, takes about a hundred days to prepare before a single yarn is dipped, which is part of why the AI-series pieces are run in limited quantities rather than treated as standard stock. Natural Tokushima indigo is produced in small, once-a-year batches limited by how much sukumo the shokunin can ferment.

For the first several years, none of this traveled. Japanese denim wasn’t yet accepted in Western markets, and PBJ’s first Pitti Uomo appearance in 2000 fell on deaf ears, as buyers had no real frame of reference for what they were looking at. The turn came in 2005, when a buyer from Blue in Green — the SoHo shop that’s done more than almost any single retailer to introduce American customers to Japanese denim — visited the brand’s Tokyo store and struck a wholesale deal. It sold, in Iwaya’s phrase, “unexpectedly well.” That single relationship became the crack in the dam. Word moved through the boutique world the way it always does — not through advertising, but through buyers telling other buyers that Japanese denim had more potential than anyone had given it credit for. Two decades later, PBJ ships to roughly twenty-five countries on every continent except Africa and Antarctica, still runs exclusive annual collaborations with Blue in Green, and counts the UK, Switzerland, Australia, Thailand, and China among its strongest markets outside Japan and the US.

Pure Blue Japan isn’t interested in reproducing history; it’s interested in extending it. That willingness to reinterpret rather than reproduce extends beyond indigo. One recent example is the brand’s Teacore denim. Teacore is a common dyeing technique for leather in which untreated light-brown leather is surface-dyed a darker color, usually black. Pure Blue Japan has developed denim that mimics this technique, featuring brown-core, black-dyed warp yarns paired with a brown weft that reveals warmer tones as it ages. It’s an unlikely crossover that reflects the company’s broader habit of asking what denim could become rather than what it once was.

Iwaya is candid about how much he still doesn’t know. On the subject of natural dyeing specifically: “There are two types: indigo grown in Japan and indigo derived from India. Both are natural indigo, but we are committed to hand-dyeing using Japanese indigo. We are still continuously learning and exploring dyeing and fabric development, and we find it to be an extremely deep and fascinating craft.” Almost thirty years into running the company, and the language is still that of someone early in an apprenticeship. He doesn’t speak with false modesty, but rather with an honest acknowledgment of how deep the craft actually goes.

Pure Blue Japan isn’t part of the so-called Osaka Five, the loose grouping that tends to dominate any conversation about the old guard of heritage Japanese denim. It doesn’t need to be. The flagship sits in Harajuku now, but the roots are still in Kojima, Okayama, where this entire industry effectively began, and the company remains founder-led, entirely Japan-made, almost three decades in. No private equity rollup, no licensing out of the name to a fashion conglomerate, just one guy who wants to make clothes on his own terms.

My visit to Pure Blue Japan’s Harajuku store in 2019 had a huge impact on my love for raw denim and inspired an appreciation for things made slowly and intentionally. The small interior of the shop, wooden shelves, brick walls, and cracked floors make it feel like the home of an artisan who puts all their time and energy into making garments with a story that will stand the test of time, rather than a meticulously curated brand built for a social media aesthetic. The authenticity I saw when I walked into that store seven years ago, and my continued awe every time they release a new piece, inspire me. Iwaya and Pure Blue Japan make garments that the world deserves to know about.

Quotes from Kenichi Iwaya sourced via direct correspondence with Kozue Tamura, Pure Blue Japan / Syoaiya Inc., June 2026

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Cotton is the most widely worn natural fiber in the world. The family of fibers it belongs to is, in the language of chemistry, the least cooperative with dye. In my last piece, I covered the three types of natural dyes: vat, mordant, and direct. This week, I’ll discuss the differences between cellulose and protein fibers and how the makeup of these fibers determines which type of dye can bond to them.

Cellulose Fibers and Dye Resistance

Cotton, linen, and hemp are all types of cellulose — a polysaccharide made of thousands of glucose units linked together. Cellulose is the primary structural component of plant cell walls, providing rigidity that enables plants and trees to grow tall and withstand environmental stress. At their molecular core, these three fibers are the same polymer. The differences between them come down to their crystalline structure and length, which we will touch on later.

Cellulose chains run parallel to each other and pack tightly. Along each chain, the –OH groups at specific carbons reach across to form hydrogen bonds with oxygen atoms on adjacent chains and also fold back to bond with their own chain. This structure creates a dense, interlocking hydrogen bond network that stabilizes the entire crystalline structure.

The result is a surface where most of the chemically reactive sites, the ones that could, in principle, bind a metal ion, are already engaged. They’re pointing inward, bonded to neighboring chains, not outward where a metal ion in solution could reach them.

The ones that are exposed on the outer surface don’t have the right geometry for metal coordination. Chelation requires an electron-donor site with a specific spatial arrangement. The metal ion needs to fit into a pocket where two donor atoms can grip it at predictable angles. Cellulose’s surface –OH groups are isolated single donors, too far apart and too geometrically constrained by the chain structure to form the kind of grip that stable metal chelation requires.

So what does all of this mean, practically? Essentially, it means that dye molecules cannot bond with cotton. How could that be possible though, given that civilizations have been utilizing and dyeing cotton for thousands of years? Well, these civilizations didn’t know they couldn’t dye cotton. They discovered a method for dyeing cotton that chemistry couldn’t explain until the 19th century.

Why Cotton Needs a Tannin Bridge

It turns out that to dye cotton, you need an intermediate called a tannin. Tannins are a class of polyphenolic compounds found widely across plant matter, in bark, leaves, fruit rinds, and seed pods. The name comes from their traditional use in leather tanning, where the same chemistry that makes them useful in dyeing also helps preserve animal hides. What they share, regardless of source, is a molecular structure built around multiple phenolic hydroxyl groups arranged on a flexible scaffold.

That structure is what makes them useful on cellulose. In a tannin bath, those hydroxyl groups form hydrogen bonds with cellulose’s exposed surface sites. These aren’t strong bonds individually, but formed simultaneously across multiple contact points, they are collectively stable enough to hold. The tannin deposits onto the fiber surface as a coating, projecting its phenolic groups outward rather than inward. Those outward-projecting groups carry something cellulose’s own surface doesn’t: the geometry that metal ions can actually grip. The mordant bath follows. Iron or aluminum chelates onto the tannin, not the cellulose beneath it. The dye chelates to the metal and is indirectly bound to the cellulose fiber.

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Among the oldest documented examples of this practice is the Indian myrobalan tradition. Myrobalan fruit, Terminalia chebula, contains among the highest concentrations of tannins of any plant source, and its use as a cellulose pretreatment before mordant dyeing has been practiced in India for centuries. Myrobalan also produces color in its own right, yielding warm yellow-browns on cotton with a fastness that would have been conspicuous against the fugitive behavior of other plant dyes on cellulose. The pretreatment function was almost certainly discovered through dyeing practice. Myrobalan was used first as a dye, its exceptional holding power noticed over generations, and eventually the tannin step was separated and applied before a different dyestuff entirely. There are almost certainly earlier, less documented examples. But myrobalan is where the record begins.

The Kalamkari textile tradition of Andhra Pradesh, an ancient Indian style of hand-painted or block-printed cotton textile art that uses natural dyes, is built on the three-link chain of cotton-tannin-mordant. Cotton cloth is first treated in a myrobalan bath, embedding tannins in the fiber surface before any dye or mordant is introduced. Once the pretreatment is set, artisans apply Kasim Kaaram, an iron solution prepared by fermenting rusted iron filings with cane jaggery and water for roughly three weeks, directly to the tannin-treated cloth. The iron ions react with the embedded tannins to form ferrous tannate, a stable, insoluble compound that develops not on the surface of the fiber but within it. Kalamkari dyers arrived at this sequence through accumulated practice, not through any understanding of chelation or polyphenolic deposition. The vocabulary is centuries older than the explanation.

Tannin-containing plants were used as dyes across many traditions without the pretreatment function being consciously separated. Walnut in Rome, oak gall across the Mediterranean and Near East, sumac across Central Asia. In each case, the tannin and colorant are both present in the same plant material, and the dyer is getting both effects simultaneously without necessarily knowing it. The separation of the tannin pretreatment from the dyeing step was itself a discovery, arrived at through generations of noticing which colors held and which didn’t.

The differences in how dyes are accepted between different members of the cellulose family come down to the crystal structure of each fiber. Crystallinity refers to how tightly the cellulose chains pack together and how much of the available hydroxyl surface is locked in internal hydrogen bonding. Higher crystallinity means more –OH groups are occupied internally, and less surface is available for external interactions.

Linen (flax) has the highest crystallinity of the three, around 80–90%. Its cellulose chains pack very tightly, which is why linen is stiff, strong, and slow to soak up moisture compared to cotton. Hemp behaves a lot like linen: high crystallinity and similarly stiff, strong fibers. Cotton has somewhat lower crystallinity, roughly 70–80%, which is why it feels softer in the hand and absorbs water more readily than linen.

Because linen and hemp are a bit more crystalline, they’re also slightly more resistant to mordant dyeing than cotton, as there are fewer easy‑to‑reach sites on the fiber surface for dye chemistry to grab. In practice, the difference is small, which is why you usually see all three discussed together as cellulose fibers rather than as three separate stories.

None of this — the tannin, the fermented iron, the three centuries of Kalamkari trial and error — would have been necessary if cotton had been built differently. Cellulose chemistry isn’t hostile to dye so much as indifferent to it. Getting color to stay meant developing a surface that cellulose doesn’t naturally have.

“A great textile, like the William Morris Strawberry Thief, is a piece of art, but it takes a lot of time to make a piece of art. It isn’t simply design either. You have to understand the fabrics and what they can bear. You have to understand the dyeing process and how to achieve certain colors and what will make the color last through the ages. If you make a mistake, you might have to begin again.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Why Wool and Silk Bind Dye More Easily

Wool and silk don’t have the same problem, though having a reactive site is no guarantee that a dye will react with it. Alizarin and carminic acid are mordant-class dyes at heart: chelation molecules built to grip a metal ion, indifferent to whatever amine or carboxyl group happens to be sitting on the fiber surface waiting for it. Mordant dyes will still prefer to have a mordant present, regardless of the fiber used.

Wool and silk are proteins, not polysaccharides. Instead of repeating glucose units in long, regular chains, they’re made from amino acids, folded into far more irregular, far less crystalline structures than cellulose ever forms. Where cellulose offers a monotonous run of –OH groups, protein fibers are studded with a whole alphabet of side chains: amine groups, carboxyl groups, sulfhydryl groups. Each has different geometry, charge, and willingness to bond. Crucially, some of these groups stick out from the fiber surface on their own without any tannin pretreatment needed. The chelation sites are already there, waiting; unlike cellulose, where cotton, linen, and hemp are the same molecule with different crystal structures, wool and silk aren’t the same protein at all. Wool is keratin, silk is fibroin. These structurally unrelated fibrous proteins happen to have reactive side chains facing the right way.

It would be tidy to say protein fibers need no pretreatment at all. That isn’t quite true, but it’s a completely different story than tannin or mordant pretreatment.

Raw wool comes off the sheep coated in lanolin, a waxy secretion from the sebaceous glands that can account for a quarter of the fiber’s weight, plus dried sweat, dirt, and whatever else got caught in the fleece. Raw silk is worse in one sense: the fibroin filament, the actual protein you want to dye, arrives wrapped in sericin, a gum that can make up nearly a third of the thread’s mass, laid down by the silkworm to glue the cocoon into a solid shell. Neither fiber can take a dye in that state. Wool has to be scoured with a gentle alkaline wash. Wool is alkali‑sensitive and can’t tolerate much more than a gentle wash. Silk has to be degummed by boiling in a hot soap bath until the sericin dissolves away and the underlying fiber shifts from stiff and dull to soft and lustrous.

This is a different kind of pretreatment than the tannin bath cotton requires. Tannin gives cellulose something it doesn’t have: a layer of phenolic groups on the surface with the right geometry to grip a metal ion, engineered onto a fiber that wasn’t meant to hold ions. Scouring and degumming, by contrast, remove what’s in the way. The amine groups, the carboxyl groups, the sulfhydryl groups are already there, already correctly shaped, already waiting under the grease and the gum. Cellulose’s problem was structural: no reactive site ever pointed in the right direction. Protein fibers’ problem is more akin to a denimhead who keeps his 21oz Iron Hearts on in the middle of summer and can only walk when he needs to run.

Everything up to this point has been about whether a bond forms. It’s worth mentioning what happens after the bond forms, because “the dye is attached” and “the dye stays attached” are not the same.

Lightfastness, Washfastness, and Crocking

Textile chemists don’t measure color-holding as one property. They measure it across a few distinct stresses, and a dye can pass one and fail another entirely:

• Lightfastness — resistance to UV breaking down the dye molecule itself

• Washfastness — resistance to the bond releasing dye into water

• Crocking or rubfastness — resistance to dye transferring by plain friction, no water involved (this is the process that sheds indigo from denim)

Cellulose, dyed through the tannin-mordant chain, is structurally worse off on nearly all three counts — not because the dyestuff itself is fragile, but because the dye sits three links removed from the fiber. Dye to metal, metal to tannin, tannin to cellulose: every additional link is another interface for water, friction, or sunlight to work on. A direct bond has one thing that can fail. A three-link chain has three.

Protein fiber’s chain is one link shorter: dye to metal and metal to fiber. That’s the structural reason wool and silk have historically held color at a depth cellulose struggles to match, independent of which specific dyestuff is involved. Fewer joints means fewer failure points.

This isn’t the mechanism behind your own jeans fading. Indigo is a vat dye, and it never chemically bonds to cotton. It’s reduced to a soluble, colorless form, worked into the fiber, then oxidized back into an insoluble pigment that’s mechanically trapped inside the cotton rather than bonded to it. That’s an even weaker hold than the tannin-mordant chain, which is exactly why indigo crocks and abrades so readily, and why a pair of raw denim fades precisely along the lines that take the most friction. It’s the extreme case of the same rule: the further a dye sits from a true bond with its fiber, the more visibly and specifically it loses that color over time.

The difference between cellulose and protein isn’t trivial. It’s why certain colors in textile history belong so specifically to certain fibers; why some of the deepest, most guarded reds and purples in the historical record were built almost exclusively on wool and silk, not cotton. A fiber that already has a place for dye to grip can hold color at a depth and permanence that cellulose, even when mordanted, rarely reaches. It’s the difference between a red that fades into memory and a red that outlives the person wearing it. It’s the kind of color that got written into sumptuary law, that started wars over trade routes, that a handful of families guarded as a livelihood for generations.

In two weeks, the series turns to exactly that: cochineal, madder, kermes — the reds and crimsons that protein fiber made possible, and the artisans still working with them today, mixing insects and roots and centuries‑old recipe books against a textile industry that mostly forgot how any of this worked. Protein gave us the color worth fighting over.

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In fact, indigotin is insoluble and can’t dye anything in its native form. A working indigo vat is a yellow-green color topped with a coppery foam that signals the bacteria in the vat are alive and well and that the fermentation process is underway. The cloth comes out of the vat the same sickly yellow-green you can see in it. The real magic comes after pulling the cloth out of the vat, once it hits the air. Starting wherever oxygen first reaches, a visible color front begins moving across the cloth. In the span of a few minutes, the cloth transforms from a yellow-green to a muddy green to teal, to the characteristic blue that indigo is famous for.

This smell test wouldn’t work, however, if one were inspecting a Turkish Red or dusty pink madder-dyed fabric. The color compounds in madder root build in strength through heat and time in a single bath and do not require any fermentation processes, though alum is used to enhance bonding. The process is tame in comparison. The cloth sits in a warm bath and gradually deepens in color, more like steeping tea than a mysterious transformation. It’s a one-and-done type process, as opposed to indigo dyeing, which can require immersing the cloth a dozen or more times into the dye vat to reach the desired color.

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Many factors affect how well a fiber or cloth takes up natural dyes. In this article, I will focus on the three types of natural dyes and the chemistry that governs their bonding. The reason indigo requires such extensive processing and maintenance to act as a dye, and madder does not, is a matter of the dye molecule’s properties.

Vat Dyes

There are three broad categories of dyes, based on their chemical compositions, which affect how they bond with fiber. The first category is the vat dyes, also known as the indigoid category. Dyes within this category include indigo, woad, and Tyrian purple. All of these dyestuffs contain the same active compound: indigotin. Indigotin is such a special molecule that it comprises its own category of dyes. This molecule has been duplicated throughout nature, in unrelated plant species and across continents. Humans on different continents independently discovered methods for extraction and use.

The primary property of indigotin that differentiates it from other dyes is its insolubility. The indigotin molecule is highly conjugated and held together by hydrogen bonding between its carbonyl (C=O) and N-H groups. In practical terms, that means the indigotin molecule would prefer to remain bound to itself rather than dissolve in water. The result is a hydrophobic crystalline solid that’s insoluble in water. If you dump powdered indigo into a tub and add cloth, nothing would transfer to the cloth.

To make indigotin usable, it must be chemically reduced, meaning electrons must be added to the molecule. This is accomplished by bacterial metabolism in an alkaline vat (typically at a pH between 9.5 and 11, maintained with lye, wood ash, or stale urine). The alkaline vat hosts facultative anaerobic bacteria, which can switch between aerobic and anaerobic metabolism depending on their environment. These bacteria will deplete the oxygen in the vat and begin anaerobic metabolism, generating electron carriers such as NADH. Electrons from NADH are transferred to the indigotin molecule, converting its carbonyl groups into hydroxyl groups and collapsing the hydrogen bonds that hold the crystal structure together. This reduction yields a molecule called leuco-indigo (”leuco” meaning colorless or pale), which is water-soluble in alkaline solution.

The dye vat needs to be both alkaline and reducing simultaneously to accomplish this process. The reduction process transforms indigo into leuco-indigo, and the high pH of the alkaline solution allows it to ionize, becoming water-soluble. If the pH drops too low, the indigo will precipitate back out. Vat maintenance is an art form that requires a delicate balance among these factors to ensure optimal conditions for dyeing. The color of the coppery foam (“flower” or handate) and the smell of the vat indicate the vat’s health to the artisans who practice the craft.

Because leuco-indigo is water-soluble, it can penetrate fibers the same way a traditional water-soluble dye would. However, the color imparted to the fiber is the same yellow-green as the vat liquid itself. Dyers must quickly remove and wring dry the fabric to ensure that the leuco-indigo is evenly distributed throughout; if one area of the fabric is more saturated than others, it can trigger oxidation and create uneven coloration.

Oxidation is the true hero of the indigo dyeing process. Once the cloth is removed from the vat and exposed to oxygen, the reverse chemical reaction begins. The hydroxyl groups are reoxidized to carbonyl groups, the hydrogen bonds reassemble, and the leuco-indigo reverts to insoluble, hydrophobic indigotin. Because this occurs while the dye is bound within the fiber’s physical structure, the indigotin crystallizes in place and is mechanically trapped within the fibers rather than chemically bound to them. This reverse reaction results in a visible color change, with the yellow-green fabric shifting to true indigo blue as oxidation occurs.

A single dip-and-oxidize cycle deposits only a thin layer of trapped indigotin, resulting in a pale blue color. Getting a garment or fabric to a deep indigo color requires repeating this process 10 to 50 times, depending on the desired color and the concentration of indigotin in the vat.

The process of preparing the indigo vat — alkalinization, aerobic depletion, anaerobic onset, and full reduction — can take anywhere from 7 to 40 days, depending on how well the vat is tended (temperature, pH, etc.). Depending on the fiber used, the dip process inside the vat can take anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour. Oxidation begins within seconds of removal from the vat, but full oxidation takes between 20 and 30 minutes. Drying the cloth between dips is not strictly necessary, but many dyehouses prefer to allow time between dips, and often allow at least 24 hours from the completion of one day’s work to the beginning of a new session. This translates roughly to a 10-17-day timeline to complete the dyeing process, depending on how much time is allowed between dips.

All of this is not to mention the 120 days of fermentation and 60 days of drying it takes to transform the indigo plant into a usable dyestuff. I’ll cover that in a separate article. Vat dyeing is truly a labor of love and an expression of honor and cultural heritage for those artisans who keep the practice alive. It’s easy to see how garments dyed with natural indigo can cost ten times as much as mass-made garments dyed with synthetic dyes. The decades of skill, knowledge, and labor required to master vat dyeing are hard to find and are becoming rarer as the years pass.

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Mordant Dyes

The second broad category of dyestuffs is known as mordant dyes. A few dyes that fall into this category are madder (active molecule alizarin), weld (luteolin), and onion skins (quercetin). Unlike vat dyes, these molecules are already water-soluble. However, a molecule that’s happy to be dissolved in water has no particular reason to leave the water and instead sit inside the fiber. Even if some dye molecules diffuse into the fiber inside the dye bath, there is nothing to keep them there. The moment you wash or rinse the cloth, the dye will migrate right back into the water.

The common element between dyes within this class that renders them valuable dyestuffs is the presence of free hydroxyl groups on the molecule. This hydroxyl group makes the dye molecule susceptible to deprotonization. This is accomplished using a mordant. A mordant is a metal salt — most commonly aluminum, iron, or tin in dye chemistry — that creates a chemical bridge between a dye molecule and a fiber that otherwise would have no incentive to bind directly. The metal pulls hard enough that the oxygen releases its proton and binds to the metal instead, while also binding the fiber. This process is known as chelation. The word mordant comes from the Latin mordere, meaning “to bite,” an apt description as the metal salt bites onto both the fiber and dye at once to hold them together.

The choice of mordant impacts the color that a dye produces. The differences come down to whether the metal has its own electrons that absorb light. Aluminum has no d-electrons able to participate in light absorption. Therefore, when alum chelates onto a dye, the color of the resulting complex comes almost entirely from the dye, undiluted and unshifted from its original or “native” color. Madder combined with alum results in Turkey red, one of the most prized colors in the natural dye world. If you were to use iron as your mordant instead, the resulting color would be a dark purple to a near-black, often called “alizarin blue-black.” This is a result of Iron’s own d-electrons that absorb light on top of what the dye itself absorbs, which darkens or dulls the resulting color, a process known as “saddening.” Other examples include tin, which brightens or warms towards an orange-red, and copper, which pushes towards green/olive tones.

Fiber is immersed in a bath containing only the metal salt (alum, iron, tin, etc.) dissolved in water and then allowed to simmer for an hour or more. This results in no visible change to the fiber, as no dye has been added, but it primes the fiber by chelating metal ions. At the same time, a separate bath is created containing the dyestuff and allowed to simmer to pull the dye molecules into the solution. Think of this like steeping a cup of tea. Afterward, the two baths are combined into one, allowing the dye to chelate with the fiber and the color to develop. Once the two baths are combined, a dye bath simmer typically takes between 30 minutes and an hour. This process, known as “pre-mordanting,” is the standard approach for mordant dyeing as it is the most predictable and controllable. Another option is “meta-mordanting”, in which the mordant and dye are combined in a single bath. This is faster but less predictable as the metal has to negotiate both binding partners at once. The final option is “post-mordanting,” in which the fiber is dyed first and then placed in a mordant bath afterward.

Mordant dyeing is fundamentally a one-and-done process, in contrast to the 10-50 dips required for vat dyeing. Once mordanted fiber is placed in a simmering dye bath, the dye molecules in solution have only a fixed number of chelation sites on the fiber to which they can bind. Given enough time at the correct heat, generally 30 minutes to an hour, the sites will be fully bound, and no further work is needed. Since indigotin is not chemically bound to fibers, the vat dye process requires much more work to achieve the same depth of color.

The depth of color for vat dyeing is a product of the number of dips. For mordant dyes, the depth of color must be controlled in other ways. The main method is by controlling the dye-to-fiber ratio. Dyers use “weight-of-fiber” (WOF) percentages to control color. The WOF is the weight of the dyestuff expressed as a percentage of the dry fiber weight. For example, a recipe might call for 20% WOF madder for a medium shade and 50% for a saturated one. More dyestuff relative to fiber means more dye molecules are available in the bath to compete for chelation sites. The ceiling, however, is determined by the mordant and not the dye. The number of chelation sites on the fiber depends on the amount of mordant in the dye bath. Although the process of mordant dyeing is simpler, it is less forgiving, as the depth of color must be determined in advance, whereas vat dyeing allows the dyer to stop when they reach the desired hue.

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Direct Dyes

The final broad category of natural dyes is the direct dyes. A few examples of dyestuffs within this category are turmeric (active molecule curcumin), henna (lawsone), and walnut hull (juglone). This category is very similar to mordant dyes in that they are both water-soluble to begin with. The difference between these two types of dyes is that direct dyes can bind to fiber without the addition of a mordant. In the case of turmeric, hydroxyl and carbonyl groups enable hydrogen bonding with the surface fiber. This is a very weak bond as there’s no chelation or covalent bonding that locks the dye to the fiber, either mechanically or chemically. The colorant is mainly held to the fiber by surface adsorption. Turmeric is the textbook example of a fugitive dye, meaning a dye that’s not permanent or colorfast. It’s instant, cheap, and disappears at the first wash.

The counter to this weak dye attraction is henna and walnut. Lawsone (henna) and juglone (walnut) are nearly twins. The chemistry behind these two is a little over my head, but suffice it to say that both of these molecules feature a quinone ring that scientists term a “doubly activated Michael acceptor,” which in practice just means they’re very eager to form permanent bonds with fibers. This readiness to bond explains why henna will dye your skin or hair for weeks or why walnut stains your hands almost as permanently as it stains wool or silk.

Henna’s durability is the reason it’s survived as a dye for over 5,000 years. Bridal mehndi traditions across South Asia and the Middle East depend on the dye’s ability to bond without a mordant. There’s no metal salt, no simmering bath, just paste and time, and the stain holds for weeks.

Turmeric and henna land at opposite ends of the durability spectrum. The difference lies entirely in whether the molecule has something to grab onto. Turmeric’s hydroxyl and carbonyl groups can only manage weak hydrogen bonds with the fiber surface so nothing actually locks in place, and then the first wash undoes it. Henna and walnut’s quinone rings form an actual covalent bond with free amine groups instead.

The physical process of dyeing with direct dyes is simple, which is where the category earns its name. First, you simmer the dyestuff (turmeric powder, henna leaves, walnut hulls) to dissolve the colorant. You next strain out the dyestuff, then add the fiber directly to the dye bath. Rinse the fiber, and you’re done. No mordant bath beforehand, no priming, no dozen-plus dips. Direct dyes skip every piece of infrastructure the other two categories need. Depth of color is controlled the same way you’d control tea strength: more dyestuff and more time in the bath. There’s no fixed number of chelation sites that put a ceiling on how much pigment the fiber can hold. That absence of a ceiling means that it’s the fastest, simplest process of the three categories, and also the one with the least control once the bath is dark enough.

Three categories with three different relationships between dye and fiber. Indigo never bonds to anything; it just gets trapped mechanically, mid-collapse from soluble to solid. Madder and its relatives bond hard, but only with a metal chaperone willing to bite into both sides at once. Turmeric bonds to nothing in particular, which is why it’s gone by the second wash, while henna and walnut hold on through a chemistry closer to mordanting. None of this happens in a vacuum, though. The fiber plays a role too. Wool takes a mordant differently than cotton does, for reasons that have nothing to do with the dye molecule and everything to do with what the fiber is made of. That’s where we pick up next: protein versus cellulose, and why a tannin bath can make cotton act like wool just long enough to take a dye it has no interest in holding. After that, I’ll cover where these dyes actually came from, and where, if anywhere, they still survive.

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Stores I visited:

Wicker Park

Mildblend Supply Co.

1342 N Milwaukee Ave.

Why you should go: The deepest Japanese denim wall in the city, full stop.

The Mecca for Japanese denim and workwear. If you only have time for one stop in Chicago, this would be my choice. Luke Cho has been running Mildblend since 2009 with over 30 years of experience in the clothing industry. The denim wall alone justifies the trip - 3sixteen, Nudie, Studio D’Artisan, Iron Heart, Japan Blue, Momotaro, Pure Blue Japan, Sugar Cane. Beyond the denim brands, there are Alden, John Lofgrens, Kardo, Master-Piece, and so much more. I spent HOURS here trying on garments I had no intention of buying - and still walked out with several pieces I couldn’t leave behind. This was the most extensive selection of Studio D’Artisan and Iron Heart that I’ve encountered in the States. Not only did they have Iron Heart 634 21oz denim in stock, but they also had the full series of Studio D’Artisan mud-dyed offerings, as well as their Suvin Gold jeans and jackets.

Independence

1909 W Division St.

Why you should go: Oak Street Bootmakers, made and sold under the same roof. Additional brands you can’t find at Mildblend.

Independence has moved through three Chicago neighborhoods since George Vlagos opened it in 2012, and it shows - this reads like a shop that’s spent over a decade narrowing down exactly what it wants to sell. A much more concentrated offering than Mildblend, Independence is the retail home of Oak Street Bootmakers, Vlagos’s own brand. Besides the boots, they carry Kapital, OrSlow, Levi’s Vintage Clothing, Gitman Vintage, Lady White Co., and more. They have an entire room devoted to Drake’s tailoring and accessories, as well as some higher-end offerings from 11.11 and All We Remember. I really enjoyed the several pairs of heavily worn Kapital jeans from Vlagos’s personal collection that really demonstrate the beauty of a well-worn pair.

Belmont Army Surplus

1318 N Milwaukee Ave.

Why you should go: Real military surplus in the basement, streetwear, and refined classic menswear upstairs.

Founded in the mid-1970s as a straight army-navy surplus store, this location has anchored Wicker Park since 2006 and has since taken on a second life as a streetwear shop. The first floor features modern silhouettes: Unbranded, Naked & Famous, Vans, Pendleton, Rhythm, and more. The basement is full of legit military surplus from American fatigues, Russian camo, Italian military jackets, the genuine article. Quite reasonably priced, all things considered. They also have a section of graphic band tees—fun to dig through, but most are modern reproductions rather than true vintage.

Lincoln Park

Huckberry

837 W Armitage Ave.

Why you should go: Passionate and knowledgeable staff who actually know the product, and a selection that exceeds expectations

This is Huckberry’s first brick-and-mortar outside its original San Francisco location. I’ve never given Huckberry much attention. I was turned off by their original model - members-only drops, an endless wall of EDC that felt like drop.com, and house-exclusive brands you couldn’t find much information on elsewhere. My perception was wrong, or at least they have evolved a long way since I first heard about them. The staff was genuine and easy to talk to without being pushy. House label Flint and Tinder anchors the floor: waxed trucker jackets, the 365 pant. Around it are Taylor Stitch, Relwen, Drake’s, Randy’s Garments, 3Sixteen, Astorflex, Paraboot, and more. I was thrilled to finally try on the Paraboot Michael in person and figure out my size. I couldn’t find these shoes at multiple stores in NYC, so I wasn’t expecting to find them here. They also featured a rack of great vintage pieces, from a Lee Rider jacket to some old-school Cubs gear. I even scored an invite to their sample sale in Columbus this fall.

River North / Magnificent Mile

Ralph Lauren Flagship

750 N Michigan Ave.

Why you should go: Purple Label and Double RL, both in person, in the biggest Ralph Lauren location in the world.

At 37,000 square feet, this flagship is Ralph Lauren’s largest store and is larger than most department stores. The entire Ralph Lauren universe - Purple Label, Double RL, PRL, home - under a single roof, with an in-house restaurant and a Ralph’s Coffee (surprisingly great coffee and not just a novelty) attached. Worth the walk-through mostly to see Purple Label and Double RL in person, since most stores carrying the brand don’t stock either. The RL Home section feels like a beautifully curated vintage furniture store—full of aesthetic inspiration, but priced high enough that I didn’t feel comfortable even picking up a coffee mug.

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Worth Visiting

These are recommendations by shopkeepers, friends who live in Chicago, and by menswear Redditors. I wasn’t able to go during this trip, but these were on my to-do list as well.

Ford General

1712 N Wells St, Old Town

Why you should go: Small European and Japanese workwear labels you won't find anywhere else in the city.

Founder Patrick Ford built the shop around small European and Japanese workwear labels he tracked down while traveling. Norse Projects, Bleu de Chauffe, Indigofera, Porter Yoshida & Co., Merz b. Schwanen, Imogene + Willie, Big John, Universal Works, Soft Goods, and more. This seems to be a top-tier store that was recommended to me several times. Unfortunately, the store was closed while I was in town and the entire week after for a buying trip in Europe. This will be my top priority next time I’m in town.

Notre

118 N Peoria St, West Loop

Why you should go: The West Loop's high-end streetwear anchor.

Founded in 2014, the place that helped put West Loop on the menswear map with its minimalist streetwear aesthetic and celebrity visitors, including Adam Levine and Travis Scott. A high-end shop that’s unapologetic, they feature Engineered Garments, Stone Island, Maison Margiela, Comme des Garçons, mfpen, visvim, plus footwear from Dr. Martens up to Marsèll. I was particularly hoping to visit this one to check out their Bare Knuckles collection, a brand I haven’t yet encountered in the wild. Notre Talks, their semi-regular speaker series, has hosted people like Alinea’s Grant Achatz — worth checking the calendar before a visit.

Richard’s Fabulous Finds

2545 W North Ave, Humboldt Park

Why you should go: Vintage tailoring curated by someone who spent decades selling it new.

Owner Richard Biasi spent two decades on the men’s floor at Neiman Marcus, Saks, and Barney’s before deciding that vintage suits hold up better than new ones. Inventory runs Victorian through the 1970s - suits, sport coats, hats, ties, dress shoes - plus a decor section heavy on nautical and equestrian motifs. A very different vibe than the heritage Americana and Japanese denim shops I normally frequent, but this one seems like getting lost in a museum.

Buck Mason

854 W Armitage Ave, Lincoln Park

Why you should go: House-made basics done well, no surprises.

The LA basics brand’s first Chicago location is in a converted brick storefront with original hardwood floors. Their famous field-spec tees, Japanese denim, leather jackets, and everything else you keep seeing on your Instagram feed. A second location opened on Southport in Lakeview in 2024. If you need reliable basics or forgot a tee/jeans for your trip, this is an easy stop near Huckberry and Todd Snyder.

Todd Snyder Chicago

815 W Armitage Ave, Lincoln Park

Why you should go: A 19th-century townhouse built entirely around Snyder's own tailoring.

Dubbed “The Townhouse” - a Victorian building from 1877 with a built-in bar and an interior modeled on Snyder’s Tribeca flagship. Soft tailoring and workwear from Snyder’s own line, alongside Alden, New Balance, and Champion. My curiosity mostly stemmed from never having been to one. I called the NYC location looking for Paraboots, but they had none, so I thought I might find some here. That was remedied by going to Huckberry first, so I scratched this one from my list.

Moth

2008 N Damen Ave, Bucktown/Wicker Park

Why you should go: A genuinely unique point of view.

Owner Catherine Becker built the assortment around two years of travel through Scandinavia and Japan, and the shop reads that way — minimalist Nordic housewares next to Blue Blue Japan’s indigo sashiko and Kapital denim. Worth the stop for some unique home goods.

Proper Cloth

15 E Oak St, 4th Floor, Gold Coast

Why you should go: Made-to-measure shirts and suits, in the bones of the old Barneys location.

Founded in 2008 as an online custom shirtmaker, Proper Cloth didn’t open a showroom outside New York until 2021 - Chicago didn’t arrive until 2025, taking 6,100 square feet on the fourth floor of the former Barneys New York space. Appointment-only, and nothing leaves with you that day: a fit expert takes the measurements, shirts ship in under two weeks, and suits in three to four weeks. Fabric sourcing is handled by Thomas Mason, VBC, Drago, and Loro Piana, which explains the price tag.

I’ve also put together a Google Map with all of these recommendations in one place. Save it for your next trip. Make sure to save it for your next trip. If you've got a spot worth the detour, let me know in the comments — I'm always planning the next trip.

The cloth carries its own version of that history. Coarse, durable cotton fabric was the material mandated for enslaved people's clothing under laws such as South Carolina's 1735 Negro Act, woven and spun largely by enslaved labor and manufactured at scale once early American textile mills took over production. After emancipation, sharecroppers kept wearing it: durable work cloth was what the job required, regardless of who was doing the requiring. In the early 1960s, civil rights organizers in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee turned work clothes and denim into a deliberate uniform, trading the dresses and suits respectability politics expected for the bib overalls sharecroppers wore - signaling solidarity with the people they organized alongside and making a pointed argument about how little had changed since Reconstruction. It's the reason denim still reads as honest, working-class material in American style nearly a century later, instead of just another fabric.

This week’s releases weren’t defined by flashy collaborations or trend-chasing silhouettes. Instead, they centered on the quiet craftsmanship that makes heritage clothing so compelling. From tea-core denim engineered to fade from black to brown, and Hokkaido deerskin boots, many of the most interesting pieces share a common thread: they’re built to become more interesting with time. Here are the releases—and recent arrivals—worth a closer look. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just items that stood out to me.

John Lofgren Bootmaker

8” Donkey Puncher Boot in Ezo Shika Deerskin Dark Brown - $1375

These are named for the folks who operated “steam donkeys”, steam-driven winches used in logging at the end of the 19th century. The operators were known as “donkey punchers”. Featuring a lace-to-toe design with a logger heel and curved panels along the vamp, these are handsome, sturdy patterns with an optional kiltie that can be laced at the front of the boot (or not).

The leather, a deep chocolate-brown deerskin from Japan, is harvested from the Ezo Shika, wild deer endemic to Japan’s northern Hokkaido region. The largest of the Shika subspecies, they live in rugged, snowy areas, and have been hunted for their meat and hides by indigenous Ainu people for centuries. These are wild animals and are not raised for their leather; as such, each hide will have natural scarring and blemishes acquired during the animal’s life. Unfortunately, this is a different subspecies of Shika than the one that bit me in Nara Park in 2019. I wouldn’t mind having a shoe of him.

Purchase at Blue Owl
Purchase at Standard & Strange

Also from John Lofgren this week, the Ezo Shika Wabash Engineer Boot (stunning), Sahara Boots in Japanese Suede, Duke Roper Boots, US Navy N-1 Field Shoes, El Capitan Boots, and USN Low Quarter Shoes.

Iron Heart

IHJ-64-BLK - Japanese Horsehide Modified Type III Jacket - Black (Teacore) - $1,680

Iron Heart has released a Modified Type III jacket in Black Teacore leather made from Japanese Horsehide from Japan’s Hemiji tannery. Teacore is a common dyeing technique for leather in which untreated light-brown leather is surface-dyed a darker color, usually black. Scratches and high-friction areas on boots or jackets will quickly show the brown base underneath, creating a personalized vintage aesthetic. The jacket starts out with a bit of a shine and then gradually softens over time, showing the variations and grain as the leather beneath begins to peek through.

Purchase from Iron Shop Provisions
Purchase from Withered Fig

Also from IH this week, the Kersey Work Shirt, Kersey Western Shirt, 14oz Ultra Heavyweight Loopwheel Cotton Crew Neck Sweat.

Pure Blue Japan

“Teacore Black x Brown” 14oz Rinsed Black Selvedge Denim - $415

This might be the most interesting drop of the week for me. Pure Blue Japan knocked this no-brainer out of the park by developing teacore denim that mimics the common leather dyeing technique. It features a brown-core, black-dyed warp yarns paired with a brown weft interior. Available in the Relaxed Tapered Fit and Slim Tapered fit from Blue Owl. Blue in Green offers an exclusive version of the Regular Straight Fit and Relaxed Tapered Fit with a custom leather patch.

Also from Pure Blue Japan this week are 12oz Selvedge Chinos in Double Indigo

Naked and Famous

“Maekake Dobby” 12.2oz Indigo Dobby - $174

The Maekake Dobby pants from N&F are inspired by traditional work aprons worn by sake merchants and laborers. These fabrics feature a dense, tight weave that was traditionally used for protecting against sharp tools, heat, and prolonged wear while still maintaining a flexible, malleable structure.

From Blue Owl:
True Guy
Weird Guy

From N&F:
True Guy
Easy Guy
Weird Guy

Also released from N&F this week is the Maekake Dobby Chore Coat (sold out) and Maekake Kimono Shirt (sold out).

Hendrix Park

H.P. Fatigues - Double Indigo HBT - $315

I thought these were worth highlighting as they are made by a single person, Rix Cannell, in Sausalito, California. Standard & Strange is partnering with Rix to produce small, exclusive batches of fatigue pants using various deadstock fabrics. Jeremy, owner of S&S found this indigo-dyed deadstock herringbone twill in a pile at the back of a textile mill in Japan. Quantities were so limited that there was only enough fabric to make five pairs of pants, one pair at a time, on a collection of sewing machines up to 80 years old. At the time of writing, there’s only one remaining. Because of the indigo dyeing, these will fade dramatically over time.

Purchase from Standard & Strange

Senui

Inside Pockets Shirt - $335

Another one-person operation worth highlighting, Senui is designed, run, and produced entirely by Hiroyuki Kato in Japan. “Senui” means “backstitching” in Japanese and refers to the vertical seam that runs down the back of a proper kimono. Each shirt is finished with a single seam down the back rather than multiple side seams. The Inside Pockets shirt has a relaxed fit and, as you may have guessed, pockets on the inside of the shirt at each hip.

Purchase from Standard and Strange

UES

Tricotine Euro Jacket - $395

This is the jacket version of the famous Tricotine fabric that UES is so known for. Released in Japan early in the spring, it has finally made its way to a few select US retailers. Tricotine is a twill-like, indigo rope-dyed fabric that appears knit but is extremely sturdy. This French chore coat-style jacket has the stiffness of a heavy-duty jacket but softens with wear. The yarns are not dyed to the core, so the jacket will produce dramatic fades quickly and produce a beautiful indigo gradient over time. I have been waiting for this release all spring, and I picked it up for myself minutes after its release.

Sold out at Withered Fig

Also from UES this week, No. 7 Yarn-Dyed Indigo T-Shirt, BD Oxford Shirt, and many more.

Rogue Territory

2043 Supply Jacket - $385

Rogue Territory’s Modern Interpretation of the classic denim jacket. Patch pockets, interior pockets that feature selvedge detailing, and chain-stitched seams. A very cool jacket that looks vintage on day one.

Purchase from Iron Shop Provisions

Eight pieces, unique materials, and more dye techniques than any single garment needs. What pieces stood out to you this week?

My prized possession, though, was a pair of Osiris D3s that I had to beg my mom to buy me. She didn’t get it. She didn’t understand them. I needed them. They were revolutionary. They had a cupsole instead of a vulcanized sole, which “cupped” my feet to provide more support when I was out skating. It had a Full-Foot Helium Tunnel Compression Anti-Impact System to absorb shock during kickflips. The 8-point Breathe-Right Ventilation Mesh Panels helped maintain internal airflow to keep my feet cool during a long sesh. They were thick, wide, and heavy.

The truth is, I didn’t understand them either. I didn’t skate then, and I never have. I was too much of a... como se dice… coward, to ever give skateboarding a real shot. But the group of friends I made during middle school was something else entirely. They were confident, aloof, and just so... brave. They put their bodies on the line every day, before and after school, in an attempt to push the boundaries just that little bit further. They failed constantly but didn’t care because they were wholly unafraid of the world or the consequences of gravity. They got up and failed again. When I met them, I decided they were everything I wanted to be.

The oversized pants we all wore served a real purpose for my friends. The baggy, sagging trousers allowed for riding and performing tricks without restricting movement. They were comfortable and breathable, even in warmer months, allowing you to hang out at the skate park for hours. For me, they were about projecting an air of nonchalance. I wanted to tell the world that I had the same kind of cool, carefree, and even dangerous attitude as the others. I knew at age 11 that I was never truly one of them. That even if I exhibited every trait of a skate culture, I would always be lacking in the one thing that truly defined my ability to fit into that mould.

Some things in life are difficult, if not impossible, to fake. For me, that was the way my shoes wore. Skaters could read me in a way that the other kids could not. When you ollie, your front foot drags up the deck, causing the outer edge of your toe box to scrape across the grip tape every single time. Within a few weeks, your sweet new skate shoes would have an “ollie hole” on the edge of the toe box on your lead foot. Before the hole is fully formed, you have the obvious abrasion from the griptape against the shoe. The griptape on a skateboard is essentially 60-80-grit sandpaper glued to a wooden board, and those abrasions don’t look like regular pavement scuffing. The bond between the shoe's sole and upper will delaminate, and the sole will peel away at the spot where the shoe bends most during tricks. Kids at my school would use Shoe Goo on their soles to repair them and sometimes use it preemptively to strengthen the shoe, leaving a wet spot. Trying to do flips can cause the grip tape to grate against the top of your shoe, shredding your laces at the bottom near your toes and sometimes destroying the eyelet as well. My friends would employ a combination of tricks, from adding Shoe Goo to their laces to harden them, to putting duct tape over their laces, to just skipping the first eyelet altogether to prevent abrasion. They would carry wax everywhere to apply to ledges and rails to make grinds easier, and end up covering themselves with it when they inevitably bailed. Skate shoe manufacturers have been developing strategies to manage these issues for decades now - reinforced ollie zones, triple-stitched toe boxes, seamless toecaps. The shoe’s design can’t prevent the inevitable, but it extends the relationship between the shoe and its wearer just a little longer.

It would take all of three seconds for a skater to notice these things on someone and determine their authenticity. The location of the hole would tell you which foot was dominant. The Shoe Goo would tell whether you cared enough to maintain your shoes instead of just replacing them - and it also told whether or not you were the kind of skater who had the money to replace things. These were things I could not replicate as someone who hung out with skateboarders. The culture spoke to me, but I could never truly speak back to it.

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The skaters who could read my shoes weren’t judging me. They read my clothes for evidence of genuine use, knew I wasn’t a skater, and included me anyway. I was using their uniform to hide my body and my lack of confidence, and it fooled everyone else - just not them. They saw me, my insecurities and all, and accepted me anyway. Clothes have their own kind of language, and you can only really speak it if you’ve worn them. I had learned to recognize it without ever being able to speak it. Decades later, I would find the same language in a completely different context - in the way a pair of raw jeans records a body over months of wear, in the way the denim community reads a fade the same way my friends read a shoe. The words were different, but the language was identical.

"I don't like the fashion business but I like people who express themselves through how they look, because everybody, especially men, are so regimented and afraid to look any different, and it inhibits their personalities." - Mark Gonzales

Skate culture and raw denim are two subcultures with which I identify. Both of these cultures, knowingly or unknowingly, subscribe to the concept of wabi-sabi. Wabi (侘) is subdued, austere beauty - the beauty found in simplicity and the unpolished. Sabi (寂) is a rustic patina - the beauty that accumulates through use and age, the visible record of time on a surface. Together they describe a Zen-rooted aesthetic philosophy that finds beauty in what is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Many fashion subcultures are the antithesis of wabi-sabi. Their logic is preservation - shoes arrive perfect and stay that way - never allowing creases and sometimes never leaving the box. Skate culture and raw denim culture do the opposite: the marks of use are not defects to be avoided but evidence to be welcomed.

Raw denim fades are the same as a blown-out skate shoe. They are markers of authenticity for those who are in the know. My Pure Blue Japan jeans, which I’m wearing as I write this, were so stiff when I bought them that I couldn’t even pull them up all the way. It took me hours to push the buttons through their holes. The indigo dye stains everything I sit on and every shirt I wear for months. I wear them dozens of times without washing them. The whiskers at my thigh crease begin to mold specifically to my body shape. The honeycombs behind my knees are determined by the cut I chose, the inseam I chose, and how I choose to cuff them. No two pairs of faded raw jeans look alike for the same reason no two pairs of skate shoes look alike - the wear shows how one specific person lived in them. The raw denim community can read wear with the same precision as a skater. Artificial fades - sandblasted, stone-washed, chemically treated - automatically out you as an outsider. The abrasion patterns are wrong. The fading is uniform where it should be varied. A cuffed hem that isn’t chainstitched or doesn’t have a selvedge ID excludes you from the club. A pair of skate shoes runs the same logic at a fraction of the speed, weeks to months, depending on how much you skate. Both styles focus on garments meant to be worn.

Over time, these two cultures have coalesced beautifully. Brands like WTAPS (pronounced “double taps”) and Supreme were founded by skateboarders who wanted to make clothing inspired by their lifestyles. Tetsu Nishiyama, founder of WTAPS, developed a crossbones logo that became a uniform for Japanese skaters and served as another marker of authenticity for those in the know.

"I made the bones logo so skaters wearing them would have the same clothes, kind of like a uniform" — Tetsu Nishiyama of WTAPS

WTAPS still makes skate-inspired clothing today, but the construction tells a different story than its origins. The brand works primarily with Japanese mills, many of which also supply raw denim to some of the world’s most reputable brands. Their BDU-derived canvas jackets use mil-spec ripstop that softens over years of wear rather than degrading. Their cotton fleece is cut with a utilitarian logic that says there’s nothing structural on the garment that isn’t doing a job. The brand’s founding philosophy - “placing things where they should be” - extends to the construction itself. A WTAPS piece is not built to look good on a rack, but built to look good on a body that’s been through something.

For me, the existence of these high-quality skate brands creates an interesting problem. Is it sensible to spend more on clothes that will be destroyed faster than almost any other activity demands? There are many perspectives one could take on this. You could say that no, it’s not sensible to spend a pretty penny on high-quality skate clothes. It’s better to buy utilitarian. Maybe buy a few pairs of durable, but cheap, Dickies or Carhartt pants and replace them often. Or, in the philosophy of wabi-sabi, you might think that the destruction is the point. Wearing quality garments extends their lifespan just a little longer than cheap ones, and the wear is part of the commitment to the lifestyle. The extra care doesn’t make it last forever, but it makes the time that it lasts more memorable.

The JNCOs are gone. The D3s are gone. What they meant to me then - that I was there, that I belonged, or wanted to - wore away with time. I spent those years wearing things designed to make my body disappear, and the wear they accumulated was the only proof that I existed.

My jeans fade in a way that reflects how my body fits into them. The whiskers are mine. The honeycombs are mine. My jeans no longer hide my body; they record the history of my body. I’m not sure which is scarier - trying to hide my body or seeing proof of it imprinted on my clothes. Both are a reflection of where I was at the time.

What I keep returning to is the shoe. The triple-stitched toe box on the D3 is reinforced at exactly the spot that Osiris knew would fail first. They built it better at the point of greatest vulnerability, knowing it would be destroyed there anyway. Is that waste, or is that commitment? Does it matter whether the thing that wears out costs twenty dollars or two hundred, if the experience of wearing it out IS the journey?

I don’t know. But I think that how well something is made makes it hurt a little more when it’s gone.

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Between the 16th and 18th centuries, the high-waisted garment of choice was the breech. Breeches were high-waisted trousers often made from kerseymere, a twilled woolen fabric that was lightweight and breathed better than the heavy broadcloth that preceded it. These trousers ended just below the knee and were worn with tall stockings that covered the lower leg. They fit slim through the thigh and seat, with closures at the knees using buttons, buckles, or ties. For military and equestrian use, leather was often the predominant material because it held up much better than wool under heavy wear.

By the 18th century, breeches (called culottes in French) became a status symbol strongly associated with the aristocracy. These were increasingly made from more elegant and expensive materials, furthering the divide between the bourgeoisie and the working class. Breeches of silk and satin were the norm for court dress and formal occasions throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and were paired with silk stockings. These elegant status pieces led to the coinage of the derogatory term sans-culottes, or “without knee-breeches,” to refer to the working class.

The working class in France wore full-length trousers called pantalons. These were typically made from coarse linen, hemp, or fustian - a sturdy cotton-linen blend that features a linen warp and a cotton weft. Fustian became the quintessential working-class fabric across Europe during this period. It was inexpensive, easy to produce, and held up to physical labor in a way that the wool, silk, or satin breeches could not. These garments were undyed, further emphasizing their status as a lower-class garment. Both breeches (culottes) and early trousers (pantalons) sat at the natural waist without a belt. These garments were tight-fitting and adjusted by gusset ties at the back, but pantalons included brace (or suspender) buttons on the back, which provided additional support since there were no knee closures. The high-rise of these pants was necessary to support braces, providing more fabric for the braces to hold and putting less tension on the wearer.

The aristocratic knee breeches came to symbolize oppression. During the French Revolution, the sans-culottes became revolutionaries who rose and overthrew the aristocracy. During the war, the pantalons became a visual symbol of resistance and liberation.

On June 20th, 1792, Parisians broke into the Tuileries Palace and forced King Louis XVI to wear a Phrygian red cap, which became a symbol of the French Revolution. According to eyewitness accounts by English doctor and writer John Moore, the crowd carried banners with anti-aristocratic slogans, including a pair of old black breeches tied to a pole bearing the slogan Libres - et sans-culottes (Free - and without breeches). Fashionable English gentlemen even adopted the French pantalon as a rejection of the French monarchy.

By the 1820s, just 21 years after the end of the French Revolution, this symbol of resistance had become the norm throughout Europe, replacing breeches on most occasions. Breeches were still used as British court dress through the 19th century and continue to be worn as a symbolic tradition into the 21st century.

By the late 1850s, incremental modifications to the trousers resulted in a strap-and-buckle back, which allowed them to be worn without braces. This modified waistband came to define the “American Trouser.” As a result, the waistband did not need to be load-bearing in the same way to support braces, reducing the need for waistcoats in non-formal attire that hid braces, which were considered an undergarment, from view.

In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented a pair of riveted work pants they termed “waist overalls,” which came in an indigo blue denim and a brown duck canvas. These pants featured a high-rise with both the strap-and-buckle back of American Trousers and brace buttons. These were meant to be highly functional trousers, designed to stay up and provide stability for miners, railroad workers, and cowboys doing physical labor.

This silhouette persisted through the 1940s, with high-waisted wool trousers that sat at or above the belly button being the universal standard across all classes. Suspenders persisted as the standard for the commoner as the American Military began experimenting with belts for support.

The Zoot Suit of the late 1930s and early 1940s took the high-rise trousers to their most extreme. The silhouette was high-waisted, wide-legged with an extreme taper at the ankle, and worn with a long drape coat and wide lapels. Performers, including Cab Calloway, popularized it in Harlem jazz clubs. It spread quickly among young Black, Mexican-American, Filipino, and Italian-American men.

Over the next 50 years, fashion continued to evolve, and while high-rise trousers remained the standard, several things led to a decline in the trouser rise.

After the U.S. entry into WWII following the attack on Pearl Harbor, wool and other textiles, as well as leather, rubber, cotton, and silk, were subject to strict government rationing. The war would hamper the ability to import textiles while creating a huge demand for uniforms. Franklin D. Roosevelt harnessed his propaganda machine to convince Americans that it was their patriotic duty to use less fabric. While military uniforms and trousers continued to maintain a high-rise, civilian garments from these times featured a lower rise and slimmer silhouette - saving precious inches of fabric. These restrictions made the Zoot Suit’s excessive fabric - its defining characteristic - effectively illegal. Bootleg tailors continued making them anyway. The predominantly white service members stationed in Los Angeles viewed Zoot Suit wearers as draft dodgers and un-American. This sentiment was particularly strong against the pachucos, or Zoot Suit-wearing Mexican-Americans.

The Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943 lasted five days. A mob of thousands of white service members and civilians moved through Los Angeles, attacking Mexican-American, Black, and Filipino young men for how they were dressed. The high-waisted trousers were a garment people were beaten for wearing and again became a symbol of rebellion, much like the pantalon was during the French Revolution.

With the development of the American Trouser in the 1850s, men could wear high-rise trousers without braces. The military began using belts with high-waisted trousers during WWI as a less cumbersome means of supporting soldiers. The braces would dig into the shoulders and wrinkle shirts, and as pants fell lower with military rationing, these issues became more pronounced. A belt, however, could provide support at any height, meaning that the natural waist was no longer the only possible anchor point. The belt began to gain popularity in the 1920s.

Before 1930, it was considered improper to have your dress shirt or braces be visible. These garments were considered underwear, and men wore buttoned waistcoats or jackets and high-rise pants to prevent their underwear from being seen. During this time, the first aloha shirts appeared in Hawaii as Japanese women adapted traditional kimono fabrics for men’s shirting. These shirts gained popularity among tourists and service members living in Hawaii, who brought them back to the mainland. Aloha shirts were worn by American celebrities, such as Duke Kahanamoku and Bing Crosby, who endorsed the shirts and the brands making them. Duke, the trailblazer that he was, normalized wearing these aloha shirts untucked. These shirts were intended to be worn without a jacket, and the flamboyant patterns were put on display. The high-rise of the common trousers hid much of these shirts, and that just wouldn’t do.

In the late 1950s, the Mod, short for “Modern,” movement emerged from working-class London youth. Mod trousers were slim, straight-legged, and cropped at the ankle. As slimmer cuts became more pronounced, the rise of trousers decreased. Shirts were tucked, and thick belts sat at their hips, lowering the waistbands. This change in style was a rejection of conservative culture and led to high-waisted trousers being associated with older generations. This style spread to America through popular music and youth culture in the mid-1960s, carried by the British Invasion and the broader counterculture. This conservative rejection persisted into the 1970s as the American hippie movement embraced hip-hugger jeans.

Though its origins are debated, sagging has been associated with hip-hop and black culture since the late 1980s. As opposed to high-rise pants worn deliberately low as a rejection of norms, this was a more extreme rejection, which featured purposely ill-fitting pants without a belt to hold them in place. Artists like Tupac, Snoop, and Biggie argued that sagging wasn’t just about fashion but an act of rebellion against the mainstream and a show of solidarity with working-class and marginalized communities. By the mid-1990s, this had seeped into mainstream teenage culture, and men and teens of all races could see sagging jeans. Other subcultures also adopted sagging, making it a key feature of the skateboarder aesthetic of the time.

As part of his FW93 Collection, Alexander McQueen developed the “bumster”. These were ultra-low-rise trousers meant to expose the top of the butt. These ultra-low-rise trousers featured a 3-5-inch rise, whereas traditional high-waisted trousers have a 12-13-inch rise, sometimes higher. Trash collectors mistakenly threw away the original pieces, which had been hidden in plastic bags to avoid spoiling the reveal, before they could be premiered or photographed. Still, this style persisted throughout McQueen’s collection for several years.

“I wanted to elongate the body, not just show the bum. To me, that part of the body— not so much the buttocks, but the bottom of the spine—that’s the most erotic part of anyone’s body.” - Alexander McQueen

The bumster’s design intention was subverted by its cultural context (body policing, eating disorder culture). Fashion items rarely get to choose what they mean once they enter the world.

The bumster arrived during the period of heroin chic - an aesthetic that prized a pale and emaciated appearance, resembling a person with a heroin addiction. In 1993, Kate Moss appeared on the cover of The Face in low-rise jeans and became an icon of the era. The garment highlighted the body it was meant to promote. Visible hip bones were the new aesthetic.

The McQueen runway concept reached the mass market through celebrity culture. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, and Lindsay Lohan made ultra-low-rise their signature look in music videos, red-carpet appearances, and constant paparazzi coverage. By 2001, Levi’s itself had introduced a Superlow silhouette. By the mid-2000s, it was impossible to buy a pair of jeans that weren’t low-rise.

Hedi Slimane translated this language to the world of menswear when he joined Dior Homme in 2000 and redrew the male silhouette. His trousers featured a low rise, very slim silhouette, and an edgy, youthful vibe. Karl Lagerfeld famously lost over 80 pounds so he could fit into Slimane’s suits, demonstrating the cultural impact of heroin chic and the low-rise revolution across the gender spectrum.

Pete Doherty and the Libertines popularized the low-rise jean as part of the “indie sleaze” aesthetic, which also featured intentionally messy hair, heavy eyeliner, and a purposeful attempt to look like you’d been up all night partying.

Not everyone fell prey to the low-rise heroin-chic aesthetics of the early to mid-2000s. Japanese reproduction brands had been faithfully returning to original American specs since the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Japan’s denim obsession began in the postwar period after service members stationed in Japan left behind pairs of high-rise Levi’s they had been wearing. By the 1970s and 1980s, collectors were traveling to the United States to find old Levi’s, and Japan turned Americana into a cultural phenomenon. As authentic vintage became harder to find, some enthusiasts began producing their own versions. The first was Shigeharu Tagaki, who founded Studio D’Artisan in 1979 with the intention of reproducing the quality and construction of Levi’s from the 1940s and 1950s. They reproduced the specifications of the vintage Levi’s faithfully with their high rise, wide legs, and original construction details - down to using the original sewing machines.

These reproductions have expanded from original Levi’s to producing high-rise trousers not as a trend, but as a commitment to original construction: Bryceland’s (1945 U.S. Army chino spec), The Armoury (Ring Jacket army chino with one-piece waistband and button fly), Jack Donnelly (M2, explicitly modeled on WWII U.S. army chinos), Buzz Rickson’s (1942 and 1945 model reproductions), RRL (officer chino), Drake’s (high rise, side adjusters, full leg), and more. Some reproduction brands will purposely incorporate flaws in the original designs as a mark of authenticity. The Japanese reproduction aesthetic is a phenomenon I wouldn’t become aware of for at least another decade.

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This is the context in which I grew up. Born in the 1990s, the pop culture of my childhood emphasized ultra-low-rise jeans with exposed underwear for women and sagging jeans with exposed underwear for men. As a kid, my mom bought me husky jeans that fit at my hips that I wore every day with a braided leather belt. In middle school, I hung out with skateboarders who had adopted sagging jeans as part of their subculture. I convinced my mom to buy me JNCO jeans, which I wore around my butt, showing my underwear, despite the woven nylon Spitfire brand belt that I wore to keep them in place.

As I grew up, I stopped sagging my pants, but I continued to wear my jeans the same way I did my entire life - at my hips with a belt. It had never even occurred to me that there was another way. The only exposure I had to high-waisted pants during my childhood was when we visited my grandfather. He had a huge belly that made him the perfect St. Nick for our community every Christmas season. He would walk around his house in a sweat-stained white undershirt, charcoal trousers up past his belly button, and suspenders on. I’ve never seen him wear a jacket; that was the whole outfit. He would often yell, “Pull up your britches,” when he’d see me sagging in my baggy jeans. He would only listen to the “golden oldies” - The Four Tops, The Temptations, The Beach Boys, etc.

My entire life, this has been my association with high-waisted pants. An old, obese man who was always in his underwear and a dirty shirt, who definitely said things like “kids these days,” and if he had any neighbors, would have definitely yelled at anyone who got near his lawn. The way my grandfather looked and carried himself was not who I wanted to be or the aesthetic I would ever strive for.

In 2003, Tina Fey debuted a skit on SNL called “Mom Jeans,” a parody commercial that joked about how unflattering high-waisted jeans were. Mom jeans embodied the woman who had given up on attractiveness - frumpy, unfashionable, and simply out of touch. “When you’ve given up, given up, put on your Mom Jeans,” the jingle espoused. High-waisted pants had become a joke. Only old, unfashionable people would wear such a thing. That had always been my perception as well.

Over the next decade, ultra-low-rise jeans fell out of fashion, replaced by standard low- to mid-rise jeans. Popularization of the skinny jean pushed waistlines slightly higher to elongate the silhouette, and brands like American Apparel and Topshop rehabilitated the “Mom Jean” label - transforming it from a fashion punchline to a woman’s essential. The term “Dad jeans” entered the zeitgeist in 2009 when Barack Obama wore a pair of high-waisted Levi’s to the MLB All-Star Game and was mocked for it.

My interest in Japanese denim and the Japanese commitment to painstaking craftsmanship - along with the global resurgence of high-waisted silhouettes - has finally piqued my interest enough to put time into understanding them. While I previously dismissed high-waisted pants because I perceived them as associated with older people, frumpy, and generally unfashionable, I now struggle with them for other reasons. I have a complicated relationship with my body, and I’m now finding that high-waisted trousers feel like a cut that is designed to fit my body instead of fitting despite my body. High-waisted trousers don’t solve my self-image issues, but they have helped me to re-frame how I see myself. Suddenly, my silhouette makes more sense. However, finding pants that actually fit is still a struggle. I carry most of my weight in my stomach and have an otherwise proportional body. My hips, where I have worn my pants my entire life, are 32 inches. For high-waisted pants to fit over my belly button, I would need to size up considerably, to a 40, for a comfortable fit. Sizing up to such a drastic extent is a massive mental hurdle that I struggle to overcome as someone with body image issues. I have not yet been able to accept the fact that I need pants four sizes bigger than I normally wear. A high-rise is defined as a front-rise over 12.5 inches, but rises can vary from this 12.5-inch mark, sometimes up to 19 inches, in some vintage reproductions. But for me, it has to sit at or above my belly button. If the pants are any lower than my belly button, they will slip from the gap at the bottom of my stomach to my hips. Even a belt can’t overcome this issue, though perhaps suspenders could alleviate this. It is complicated to find specific pants that fit exactly where I need them to without falling. It also means I’m not comfortable purchasing pants online without trying them on.

"How can you live the high life if you do not wear the high heels high-waisted pants?" - Sonia Rykiel

Additionally, finding quality pants from brands I know I like has been a struggle. Japanese heritage brands that demonstrate the level of craftsmanship I appreciate do not make waist sizes large enough for my stomach. Knowing that very few Japanese brands make pants large enough to fit me has certainly not helped my self-image issues. Bronson tops out at 38 in every cut I’ve tried, and I haven’t been able to button any of them. I had my eye on a pair of orSlow fatigues for a long time, but the size charts indicate that they’re not for me, with their largest size maxing out at a 36.5-inch waist. I got the opportunity to try them on in person and ended up buying their largest size, XXL, even though they barely button, and I cannot wear them for an extended period due to the discomfort. As much as I love these pants, it was an emotional impulse purchase that was made as a refusal to accept my body for how it is.

So far, the only high-waisted pants I have found that fit my stomach and have a flattering silhouette are the barrel pants from Uniqlo. I hope to get my hands on a pair of vintage Polo Ralph Lauren Andrew pants in the near future as the next step in my exploration. While I have developed a newfound appreciation for high-waisted pants, I am still working to make them work for my body. Considering they’ve been around since the 8th century BCE, I figure high-waisted pants can wait for me to catch up. My quest will go on.

In my defense, May was not a normal month. I had a few rare opportunities to see some of my favorite brands in person, which I don’t often get. There’s only one shop in my area that aligns with my aesthetic, and while I visit pretty regularly, they don’t carry many Japanese brands. We traveled to Northern Virginia to see some friends, and I immediately started researching which stores had opened since we had left. Of course, I’d hit Uniqlo, but I had no idea that Withered Fig was based in NoVa. And while their brick-and-mortar storefront has not yet opened, I was able to grab some time with Richard, the owner (and main model), to try on some pieces. You already know the story of my New York trip. I took advantage of my wife’s work trip to take a day off and go shopping. My main goal was to try on some Iron Heart denim. Did I try on a single piece? No. I couldn’t find anywhere that had the UHR series in a size that fit my stomach. But I did get some cute lil Iron Heart socks, so I will be joining a biker gang imminently. I also bought many, many other things while I was in the city.

Wait, what’s that? Not every store gave me an e-receipt, and there are still more items to account for? Okay. Okay. Everything is fine. Money is fleeting, SS26 is forever. Here are all of my purchases for the month.

The Tees

Buck Mason Field-Spec Cotton Heavy Tee in Speckle Grey — Purchased at Buck Mason (in-store)

Buck Mason’s Field-Spec line has been all over my feed lately. And while I genuinely like the look of many of the pieces, their branding makes me feel like they’re a big corporation trying to appeal to upper-middle-class dads who just heard about tailoring. I’m skeptical that the quality can warrant the prices they’re charging. I decided to grab this basic tee as a trial to see if the quality lives up to the hype. At 310 GSM, this is more than double the density of their core tees. I’ve only worn it once thus far, but it seems like a solid tee for the price.

3sixteen Heavyweight Boxy T-Shirt in White — Purchased at 3sixteen (in-store)

I picked this one up after seeing it recommended by another big-guy fashionista I enjoy, Eugene Park. The new boxy iteration takes their heavyweight jersey, gives it a wider chest, and cuts it shorter and boxier than their standard 2-pack. At 270 GSM, it’s substantial enough to maintain structure (which is important for flattering my shape) but not impossibly heavy to wear in the summer months. It fits pretty snug without the oversized fit that I’ve come to associate with the term “boxy” as of late. I was told this sold out online almost immediately after launch, so I was grateful they had these in stock at their Flagship. Euge is also a fan of the Buck Mason tee and also recommends the loopwheel tee from A New Medium. I hope to get my hands on one of those to review in the coming months.

Lady White Co. Municipal T-Shirt in White — Purchased at Cueva (in-store)

I walked into Cueva looking specifically for Lady White. I was hoping to pick up one of the Rugby tees, which I had heard were heavyweight and a boxy fit. Ceuva didn’t have any of the Rugby tees in my size, but said this Municipal tee was their basic offering. I found out that it is not actually the case, but the Municipal tee does seem very similar to Our Tee, just a little boxier and with a high neckline. Which might actually be a little better for me. The cotton comes from North Carolina farms and weighs in at six ounces (203 GSM), so it doesn’t quite have the same heft structure I enjoy about heavyweight shirts. I’ve been wanting to try LW for a while and didn’t want to leave empty-handed. This is certainly a quality piece, but I’ll likely be wearing this one more as an undershirt. Cueva gave me a solid quality branded tote with a zip closure with purchase, which made me feel a little better.

Lady White Co. Rugby T-Shirt in Pewter — Purchased direct from Lady White Co.

This is the piece I wanted. After not being able to find my size at Cueva or a color I liked at C’H’C’M, I ordered this one online. This is Lady White’s heaviest offering -ten-ounce jersey (340 GSM), sewn in Los Angeles from 100% US cotton. It’s unclear if it’s the same NC cotton as the Municipal or sourced elsewhere. It fits wide in the shoulders and chest with a high, set-in collar. Don’t ask me what that means. The shirt is stiff and structured the way I like my heavyweight tees to feel, and LW promises it softens with washes while retaining its shape. I really enjoy the fit and the feel, and it seems like it will only get better with age.

Whitesville Tubular Knit Pocket T-Shirt in Pigment Dyed Black — Purchased at Self Edge New York (in-store)

I had no intention of buying this shirt. In fact, I didn’t even think I liked Whitesville’s shirts. I bought the infamous two-pack at this same store a few years back. I do appreciate the quality of the material, but I feel like the fit isn’t very flattering on me. I had to size up to an XXL (shattered ego) to get the chest to fit, but then the stomach is large and billowy. The collar bacons, and the whole thing is just unflattering on me. Clearly, they’re doing something right, though, if everyone else loves them. Whitesville was one of America’s most popular sportswear brands in the 1950s before being overtaken by bigger players and eventually shuttered. Japan’s Toyo Enterprises revived the name in 2007 and has been carefully reproducing the original tees ever since. This loopwheel pocket tee comes in at an unknown weight (????? TELL ME) and features a heavy wash that leads to a beautiful, worn-in black. The color is what kept me staring at it and beckoned me to try it on. This one runs bigger than the two-pack, and I went down a size, but it maintains the broad chest and boxy fit without the billowing in the stomach. The fabric feels a little more substantial than the two-pack fabric, so I’m hoping the added structure will keep these collar in good shape.

The Shorts

Human By Nature Seaside Nylon Track Shorts in Purple — Purchased direct from Human By Nature

Inspired by - and I quote - “the effortless sports style of John F. Kennedy Jr.,” these lightweight nylon track shorts channel 1990s New England summers with six yellow side stripes. Cape Town-based, Tokyo-influenced, and obsessed with American athletic nostalgia, Human By Nature filtered this piece through several different cultures before dropping it off at my doorstep. These are fun shorts. I love the bold purple-and-yellow contrast, and the inseam can’t possibly be longer than 3 inches. I’m actually wearing these right now with an Industry of all Nations Muscle Tank in Shellac and New Balance 990v6s in Vintage Rose. I feel like the quintessential slutty 80’s dad, and although I’d never leave the house in this outfit, I feel hot. Unfortunately, I do have some ethical objections to this piece. I have been making a concerted effort to avoid synthetic fibers, and this is 100% nylon. I did know that going in, but I figured with underwear, I wouldn’t have any plastic rubbing against my skin. That’s not my only issue with plastic clothes, but I don’t always make the best choices. It’s not advertised or labeled on their site, but these also feature a nylon lining, which makes wearing underwear with these pretty uncomfortable. I have been transitioning all my gym wear to natural fibers (I love these Nero shorts), but I still own some old ratty nylon gym shorts, too. TBD on the fate of these shorts in my wardrobe. If you know of any super slutty retro shorts in cotton, let me know.

William Ellery Highkick Shorts — Purchased at Blue In Green, SoHo (in-store)

This might be the biggest highlight from my New York Trip - discovering William Ellery. William Ellery is a small-batch Brooklyn brand that produces what they call outdoor and workwear from both new and repurposed materials. I first came across them at &Son in SoHo. I was struck by the substantial feel and sewing of the shirts in their Picnic Shirt series. They also had these Highkick Shorts, but I was too hesitant to spend that kind of money on a brand I had never heard of. But as I walked around town, just like a Knicks fan during the ECF, those pieces would not stop yelling at me. After spending some time reading about the brand and sipping coffee at La Colombe, I decided to go back to &Son and pick up the shorts. Unfortunately for them, I ran into them at Blue In Green first. The Highkick Shorts are made from 100% cotton sashiko, which they refer to as Judo fabric, and have subtle diamond-stitch detailing down the leg that you can’t really see in the stock photos. The fabric feels substantial, the 5” inseam does me lots of favors, and the leg opening isn’t overly wide. These shorts are white, and WE recommend dyeing them at the end of the season to refresh them for next year, even selling the indigo dye themselves. While I’m not sure about the “outdoor” label of WE, I am now a big fan of their fabric, construction, and styling. Which leads me to…

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The Shirts

William Ellery Pocket Picnic Shirt in Striped Rope — Purchased online from William Ellery

Did I mention I like William Ellery? Billed as “the smallest viable piece of outdoor gear,” the Pocket Picnic Shirt is a shacket that doubles as a picnic blanket in an emergency. Again, not sure about that part, but I am planning on a picnic this weekend, so maybe I’ll test it out. The other shirts in this series are gingham, which definitely give picnic vibes, but this one is yard dyed blue with rope stripes. This piece is made from a six ounce 100% Japanese cotton, with Corzo (I assume they mean Corozo?) nut buttons, keyhole buttonholes, and dual internal waistband pockets with buttons. The construction is meticulous, and this is the only shirt on the market that will save you if you get stranded in a park with a wicker basket full of various meats and cheeses.

Polo Ralph Lauren Striped Oxford — Purchased at Polo Ralph Lauren (in-store)

While my wife hunted for a Polo Bear sweater, I did the responsible thing. and perused the sales rack. A classic piece from Ralph, the blue stripe is versatile enough to wear in any setting. Made from 100% cotton, the company says it uses a secret wash that gives it “instant character, ease, and a heathered softness”. It’s a comfy shirt. Did I need to make this purchase? No. Do I now own this shirt? Yes. And that’s what’s important.

J.Crew Colorblock Shirt — Purchased on eBay

Did you know that eBay now has a livestreaming feature? I never use eBay, but I got a notification from the app that someone was going live with a big menswear sale! I had no idea what was going on. I clicked the notification and was transported into a magical world where two men rattled off one item a minute in auction format, each starting at $5. They had Brooks Brothers, LL Bean, Eddie Bauer, and lots of other brands I wasn’t interested in. But they were all so cheap. And then this piece popped up. Oh, I’ve seen that shirt before! Cool concept. I tapped the screen once, $6 was deducted from my bank account, and 3 days later, it was on my doorstep. The whole experience was a whirlwind. I honestly don’t even know where this shirt is. I put it in the laundry basket and haven’t seen it since. But it was $6.

RRL Indigo Chambray Workshirt — Purchased at RRL (in-store)

My first foray into the RRL world. I was overwhelmed and spent way too long looking through every piece in the store. I was equally overwhelmed by the prices of most of the pieces, especially considering the Philippine origin of many of the products, which they purposely leave off the product descriptions. I was quite impressed by the detail of the pieces, however. Bartacks on the breast pockets and the defined pen/pencil pocket convinced me to give the shirt a shot. The fabric is thin enough to breathe in summer but would still look good layered under a jacket. I had a great conversation with the associate about the legality of short-sleeve shirts in male fashion. Not to mention a gorgeous fitting room.

The Pants

orSlow Regular Fit Fatigue Pants in Green — Purchased at Withered Fig showroom in Virginia

orSlow’s Fatigue Pants are one of those pieces that seem to come up in every conversation about fatigues. These have been on my mind for a long time, but when I wear high-waisted pants, I have to go up substantially in size compared to my jeans size. This is a huge frustration for me and a reason I have avoided high-waisted pants my entire life. It’s something I’ll write a post about at some point. I’ve bought Bronson fatigues and worn them at the.. high hips? You can tell that they’re not meant to be worn that way. I bought some fatigues from IndigoSea, which is the only brand I found that made sizing big enough, and those have been my go-to for the last few months. But I’ve always wanted the orSlows. Given the opportunity, I had to at least try them on. Richard from Withered Fig met up with me, and I ended up purchasing the XXL, the largest they make. They’re uncomfortably tight, and I’m not sure they’re wearable for any extended period. But I was so excited that they even buttoned, that I decided to buy them and thought that I would eventually fit into them. If history is any indication, I probably will never fit into these properly. They’re durable, soft, and so comfortable (besides the waist). The Regular Fit has a mostly straight leg and an accommodating top block - relaxed without being baggy and plenty of room for my marble sculpted thighs. Do I love these pants? Absolutely. Am I glad I purchased them? I’m still not really sure.

Uniqlo Barrel Pants in Off White — Purchased at Uniqlo (in-store)

As a millennial who got into fashion in the mid-2010s, I’ve always geared towards skinny/slim fits - especially when I was smaller. Part of growing up (and out) and learning to dress for my body is realizing that these cuts no longer suit me. As pants get wider, the barrel shape has become all the rage. I was very hesitant to try a silhouette so wide, thinking they would only make me look bigger. Like I was wearing a huge t-shirt in the pool, obviously trying to hide my body. But I actually love the way these fit me. These pants come from the UNIQLO:C Spring/Summer 2026 collection by Clare Waight Keller and are among the very few pairs of high-waisted pants I have found from a retailer I like that come in my size. The shape is flattering and stylish, looking intentionally oversized without looking baggy; the materials are 100% cotton, and the off-white color makes them a great piece for summer casual wear.

The Jacket

Uniqlo x JW Anderson Zip-Up Blouson in Navy — Purchased at Uniqlo (in-store)

This might be one of the most worn pieces in my wardrobe in 2026. This is part of the Spring/Summer 2026 JW Anderson collaboration, which leans into ivy with vintage workwear references. It has a cropped, relaxed fit, which I feel lends itself perfectly to some of the high-waisted pieces I have been trying to get into, and is sufficiently light that I have been able to continue wearing it as the days get into the high 70s. I love my denim jacket, but it’s a little heavy for summer, and I’ve been wearing several new white shirts and now a pair of white pants. Now I wear the denim jacket at home in my office to work on the sick fades and the Blouson when I go out. A great-looking jacket.

The Shoes

J.Crew Camden Leather Loafers with Rubber Soles in Black — Purchased at J.Crew (in-store)

I am partially color blind. I struggle with reds and greens, and often cannot distinguish between shades of the same color. When I started my fashion journey, I decided to pick a color palette and stick with it. I would wear brown shoes/belts, and stick to mostly earth tones for everything else. That simplified my life so much, but kept me stuck in a box. What if the label didn’t say the color on it? I would have to take a picture, ask a friend to decode it, and then wait for the response while I stood awkwardly in the sales section. But I cannot deny the appeal of the black shoe. I cannot live my life in fear of my lack of vision and miss out on other palettes. I’m going to purchase a black shoe (DUN DUN DUNNNN). I have wide feet and searched far and wide for a loafer to try on before purchasing. I was intent on buying the Bass Weejuns but couldn’t find a single store with them in stock. I took the shot of trying on the J.Crew version and just sizing up to accommodate my width, only to find out I didn’t even need to. They fit great in my normal size. These also have a rubber sole, which is nice, since you don't have to worry about shredding the leather after a night of walking around town.

The Accessories

UES 89-DR Brass Key Ring — Purchased at Withered Fig showroom

It’s a key ring. What I really want is the Tricotine Euro Jacket, which is coming to Withered Fig later this spring, but until then, I wanted something from UES. UES is a small Japanese label founded in 1994 by Chuji Matsumoto, whose name is derived from the English word “waste” as a philosophy against disposable fashion. The key ring is engraved on both sides and is designed to age with oxidation, just like their denim. I actually have no idea where this thing is in my house. Probably with my J.Crew shirt somewhere.

Studio D’Artisan Indigo Jacquard Boro Bag — Purchased at Withered Fig showroom

Studio D’Artisan is one of the original Osaka Five and a foundational name in Japanese heritage denim. This tote is crafted from their original sashiko jacquard fabric, distressed for a worn-in appearance. The boro-patch design features varying degrees of indigo shading, giving each bag a slightly different character. It will continue to fade over time and is a good accompaniment to my Pure Blue Japan Jacquard Boro Patchwork Shirt, which I purchased at Blue Owl a few months back. I’m going to have a tough time wearing all my new white shirts, considering all of my other pieces bleed indigo.

Self Edge x Iron Heart Zippo 1941 Repro Lighter — Purchased at Self Edge New York (in-store)

I went around New York looking for Iron Heart, and I’m leaving with Iron Heart, damnit. Engraved with both Iron Heart and Self Edge logos, this Zippo stays in the chest pocket of my Type 3 jacket to encourage fades. Do I smoke? No. Am I a poser? You better believe it. In fact, I play guitar in a band built around the fact that I’m a poser!

Iron Heart Heavyweight Socks in Gray/Navy — Purchased at Self Edge New York (in-store)

These were recommended to me by the associate at Self Edge when I was looking at the Merz B. socks. I didn’t realize they contained polyester when I bought them, but they are quite comfortable with cushioned soles and a snug fit. They look cool and feel nice, but given the cotton/poly construction, I’m not sure they’d actually hold up to hiking. But they look like they were made with that exact purpose in mind.

Somewhere out there, the responsible version of me is scrolling down this mile-long list of items and shaking his head. I'm choosing not to make eye contact with him as I refresh the William Ellery PuddleJumper Shorts page, hoping they sell out before I buy them. I’m going cross-eyed staring at my other monitor, waiting for the Wonder Looper restock at Blue Owl.

See you in June, hopefully with more restraint.

When I was 10, the Army moved my family to Hawaii. My reality warped seemingly overnight. I lost my best friend (shout-out JC), my first crush, and a school I loved. With a one-month-old brother who got all of my mom’s attention, I struggled to cope with the changes. I was miserable in paradise.

Amid this tumult, I found the mask I would don until adulthood. At my middle school, I befriended a group of skaters who listened to metal music of an intensity I couldn’t even fathom at the time. They were everything I wanted to be: aloof, confident, and edgy. I developed a fascination with skate and street culture, as well as metal music, and tried to model my mannerisms after theirs - feigning an air of confidence and getting myself accepted to the friend group.

They also, inadvertently, taught me how to hide. Taking cues from them, I convinced my mom to buy JNCO jeans, band tees, huge hoodies, and I dyed my hair red. I wore an oversized Slipknot hoodie every day for nearly four years; no one would ever know what my body looked like, and I didn’t have to feel shame for existing. I lived in Hawaii for two years, but my experience there left a lasting impression. To this day, I still listen to mostly metal music, and I even play guitar in a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater cover band (that’s a whole other story).

In college and grad school, I worked hard to lose weight, dropping 50 pounds in two years, but developing an unhealthy relationship with food and my body. Meanwhile, like many edgelords, I spent hours on Reddit. Posts from /r/malefashionadvice led me to the “WAYWT” thread, where most users blurred or cropped their faces when sharing photos for critique. This anonymity struck me - these faceless people still managed to radiate confidence in their well-fitting clothes. I could sense charisma through the screen. Regardless of their success, attractiveness, or fitness, all I knew was that the guy was wearing the FUCK out of that OCBD. I embraced the uniform: my first raw denim from Unbranded, Clark’s desert boots, and three OCBDs I’d rotate for years. I felt reborn.

After grad school, I moved across the country to start my career and fell into a deep depression. I gained back more weight than I lost. I was in denial and kept wearing the same clothes until the buttons started popping off. I was so ashamed of my failure in allowing myself to gain the weight back that I decided it would be pointless to buy nice new clothes until I lost the weight again. It’s been ten years now since I left grad school, and I still tell myself that sometimes. I maintained an interest in clothes, especially Japanese raw denim, and even bought a pair from 3Sixteen to give myself motivation to lose weight and fit into them. I gave them away years later, without ever wearing them. I went to Japan in 2019 and bought a pair of xx-013 from Pure Blue Japan. Six months later, COVID hit, I gained even more weight, and they sat on my shelf for the next three years while I tried desperately to fit back into them. For at least 5 years, I didn’t allow myself to buy anything more expensive than the Merona/Mossimo collections at Target.

I honestly don’t know what the tipping point was for me, or why I finally decided to be kinder to myself. Maybe it was leaving DC and being out of sight of the fittest city in America, where everyone is a fitness influencer, VP of finance, and wearing a tailored suit. Or maybe it was the years of therapy finally paying off. Either way, I decided that just because I’m not satisfied with my body doesn’t mean I don’t deserve nice things. It doesn’t mean I can’t feel good about myself. In fact, now more than ever, I could really use that boost of confidence that I know taking care of my appearance brought me in the past.

This past October, I went back to Japan. I’ve been able to fit into my PBJ xx013s for a while now, but they’re still uncomfortably snug. This time, I took a different approach: instead of buying my old size to motivate weight loss, I was realistic with myself and bought clothes that fit my body and made me feel good. I treated myself to a pair of Momotaro MMJB0100 and a thermal tee while in Kyoto, and a Flat Head FN-OJ-D003 from their Jingumae store in Tokyo.

Since I got home in November, I’ve been shopping with intention - watching and learning how different silhouettes frame me, emphasizing natural fibers and quality craftsmanship, and discovering what makes me feel good.

Going forward, you can expect posts covering my ongoing fashion journey; exploring the history and culture behind heritage Americana and skatewear brands; the craft of dyeing and how it shapes the garments we wear; honest product reviews; and flagging sales worth paying attention to. Above all, I want this to be a resource for those who have felt locked out of this world because of their size - because no one should have to wait until they’re a different person to dress like themselves.

If any of this resonates with you, I’d love to have you along for the ride. Thanks for reading. -Chaz

My wife had a work trip to New Jersey early this week. Being the wise and frugal guy that I am, all I heard was “free hotel!” Newark is right across the river from Manhattan right? That’s basically two free nights in NYC and all I have to do is buy a plane ticket. It would be financially irresponsible not to go. I’m not going to tell you what I spent in New York. What I will tell you is that it involved two days of non-stop clothes shopping, the best patty melt of my life (shoutout to Revelie) and, at least two purchases I described as an “investment” to my wife, and an internal debate on how bad it would be if my car got repossessed.

Clearly I am sensible and would never fall victim to the temptation of a good deal, especially when it is just a trap to make you spend even more. Which brings me to Memorial Day sales, an ancient tradition designed specifically to test the financial discipline of people who have none. Across the internet, many of my favorite brands have laid grass over a pit of snakes and emailed me asking me to walk right in. I have looked at all of the pieces. I have added several to my cart. I have done nothing further, but now you must suffer temptation as well. We’re all in this together.

What follows is a list of things I would be buying right now, on sale, if the city of New York had not gotten there first.

Samurai Jeans – Open Collar Shirt in Sashiko Kanoko Aimadara, $315

Okay, this one is not on sale. But jeez, look at this shirt. From afar it looks like a brown open collar shirt, but close up, the texture is tremendous and I am a sucker for texture. This is Samurai’s take on kanoko, which is a traditional Japanese pattern dyeing technique that seeks to replicate the coat of a baby fawn. And look how cute Bambi turned out. The shirt layers natural indigo, pure indigo, and brown-dyed yarns into a textured sashiko weave that looks like it took someone a very long time to make (it did). Camp collar, natural nut buttons, single chest pocket, 100% cotton, made in Japan. At $315 it is absolutely a “what if I just told my wife that shirt isn’t new” situation, but it’s also the one item on this list I’d buy at full price without losing sleep - which is saying something, given how this week has gone.

Kartik Research – Patchwork Printed Kantha Cotton Drawstring Shorts, $330 $165

As a massive fan of Japanese denim and craftsmanship, I’ve been quite ignorant of Indian textiles and brands until very recently. But they certainly have my attention as of late. Each pair of these shorts is upcycled from vintage kantha quilts - an traditional South Asian textile defined by its dense hand-stitching and themselves often made of recycled saris - and pieced together with block-printed cotton panels. No two are alike, which is either a selling point or an anxiety trigger depending on how you feel about online shopping. Drawstring waist, fair-trade made (double recycled!), and with craftsmanship that will outlast the rest of your wardrobe. Half off for Memorial Day, which means you’re basically saving the environment and your bank account.

Kardo – Embroidered Bird Shirt in Natural, $260 $208

Another Indian brand I’ve been drawn to recently. This is one of those pieces where the production story itself is enough to make you buy it: made by a single tailor from start to finish, hand-finished, lightweight pinstripe cotton with a colorful bird embroidered front and back. It’s the kind of shirt that looks effortless because someone put an enormous amount of effort into it. As I said, I’m a sucker for textures, so the level of craftsmanship combined with a cute textured bird is an instant dub. Oversized fit, camp collar, and 20% off through Monday at Stag.

Kardo – Tiger Block Print Shirt in Blue, $170 $136

Where the bird shirt is embroidered, this one is block-printed - a wooden stamp applied by hand to lightweight cotton. Same one-tailor, hand-finished production ethos, same relaxed camp-collar silhouette, significantly lower price. This one is a similar concept to the Flat Head Hundred Tigers Linen Shirt that I already own, but as the old adage goes “Can you ever have too many tiger shirts?” I say no. At $136 after the discount it’s really quite reasonable for what you’re getting.

Bather – 4.5” Seersucker Swim Trunks in Black, $145 $116

Sometimes you just need a really good pair of swim trunks. This one is part of Bather’s new Modern Trunk series, which features an ergonomic silhouette with modern tailoring, quick-dry Portuguese nylon, four-way stretch mesh lining that disappears once you’re wearing it, deep side pockets, and a zippered back pocket. The 4.5” inseam is perfect for thigh season, a.k.a. summer. I have a few pairs of the classic trunk that I am quite happy with (including a pair with tigers!) and am interested in trying the Modern Trunks too.

orSlow – Herringbone Vintage Fit Fatigue Pant in Army Green, $266 $186

It’s widely known at this point that orSlow makes top tier fatigues. Woven in Japan from a dark olive herringbone twill and feature a very high rise. They have the texture to invoke curiosity up close, but are subtle enough to work with basically everything. The “vintage fit” means it has ease through the leg without tipping into wide-leg territory, borrowing its proportions from 1940s military trousers. The color will continue to age beautifully over time. I own a pair of the non-HBT fatigues from orSlow and they’re stunning. But like, I should probably get the HBT too, right?

Blundstone – Heritage Chelsea Boot in Brown, $354.95 $195.22

Blundstone’s Heritage Chelsea is the brand’s dressed-up answer to their workhorse originals. Founded in Tasmania in 1870, Blundstone spent the last 150 years earning its cult following. Sadly, I’ve not been that familiar with Blundstone’s offerings until I heard Terry Donovan of Percival wax poetic about them on Throwing Fits. I visited their NYC location this week, found my size, and am lying in wait to pounce.. At 45% off, this is probably the most defensible purchase on the entire list. You know what, actually, I might go buy these. Brb.

Percival – Vintage Wash Oliver Chore Jacket in Red, $270 $202.50

Speaking of Percival.. This red chore coat makes me think of James Dean. You’ll be the coolest man alive in this coat, guaranteed*. It’s 100% cotton canvas, garment-dyed and enzyme-washed so it arrives already broken in, with that subtly faded vintage character that normally takes two years of Saturday errands to achieve. Classic French chore silhouette with branded metal hardware, twin-needle contrast topstitching, and three practical patch pockets. This is a limited run with only 200 made. It would be pretty irresponsible of you to not buy this right now, because you’ll never see it again.

Banana Republic Archive Reissue – Hooded Utility Jacket, $350 $245

The most interesting thing BR has done in a long while and a return to their roots. Part of an exclusive capsule with The Explorers Club - the group with members behind some of history’s most consequential expeditions (first to the North Pole (doubtful), first to the South Pole, first to summit Everest, OceanGate (LOL)). This four-pocket utility jacket is built from rugged cotton with drawcords at the waist, hem, and hood. The hood detaches and stows in a pocket when the weather cooperates, which it won’t, but it’s nice that the option exists. Relaxed fit, dropped shoulders, and unlined so it actually breathes. You'll just be wearing this to the farmers market, but everyone will think you just murdered elephants on the savanna.

Knickerbocker – “Beefy” Cotton Oxford in Navy Stripe, $195 $136.50

Knickerbocker spent multiple seasons working with their mill to develop a custom Oxford cloth heavy enough to actually earn the OCBD’s reputation — the kind of weight you find in vintage shirts that makes modern ones feel like tissue paper by comparison. Defined collar roll, mother-of-pearl buttons, a casual cut that works untucked at a cookout or tucked in with a tie if the occasion calls for it. I picked up the Rib Pocket Tee a few weeks ago and have been very impressed. I went to the flagship in NYC and was enamored by the quality of the chinos. Unfortunately they were the very first shop I went to on my trip and I wasn’t ready to commit to a big purchase without checking out all the other stores. I will certainly be taking another look. Knickerbocker isn’t talked about enough. Discount applied in cart.

J.Crew – Short-Sleeve Baird McNutt Irish Linen Shirt in Ink, $110 $65.50

The one on this list your dad might also own, and you realize he’s smarter than he looks. You’ve seen countless posts this season about how linen is a requirement for summer time, and I have a hard time arguing. J.Crew sources their linen from Ireland’s Baird McNutt mill, which is widely considered the gold standard for Irish linen since 1912. The result is a shirt that’s soft out of the box, breathes in actual heat, and looks better wrinkled than most shirts look pressed. I wore the long sleeve version of this shirt in 95 degree heat this week and it felt like I was topless. You’ll reach for this one a lot this summer and the next 10 summers too.

*Not Guaranteed