Twice a Year in Okayama
Twice a Year in Okayama
Denim is decided in the room, with the cloth in your hands and the people who make it beside you.
The Land of Sunshine
Twice a year I go to Okayama for denim meetings. The prefecture calls itself hare no kuni, the land of sunshine, for its long run of clear days.
Cotton and indigo have been part of life here since around 1600. The land along the coast held too much salt for rice, so people grew cotton instead. Four hundred years later, that cotton is the reason I get on the plane.
The Dye House
Rope dyeing is where our blue begins. Cotton yarn is gathered into long ropes and run through vats of indigo, again and again. Each dip lays down more color. The dye stays on the outside of the yarn and leaves a pale core. The Japanese call that white heart shinpaku. It is the reason denim wears back to light at the knee and the pocket, and the reason a pair of jeans comes to look like the man who wears it.
I have stood in that dye house holding indigo yarn that went into Black Bear Brand denim.
The Loom
Our denim is woven on shuttle looms. The shuttle carries the weft across the cloth and back again, so each edge closes on itself. That closed edge is the self edge, the selvedge. The looms run slowly and the cloth comes off narrow and dense.
I have stood beside our denim as it came off the loom. Cloth tells you things in person that no photograph ever will.
The Sewing Room
Our jeans are sewn in Okayama by a family sewing room more than five generations deep. The Japanese diamond quilting that lines some of our jackets comes from there too. The meetings are about the work: the cloth, the seams, and the pieces still to come.
What Comes Home
The Vintage BLACK BEAR BRAND Ultimate Jeans show what those trips are for. They are made in Okayama from botanical indigo on rope dyed organic cotton, woven into 13oz shuttle loom selvedge. Botanical indigo comes from the plant itself. It is the oldest blue there is.
Our denim is decided in person, in Okayama, twice a year.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
Vintage BLACK BEAR BRAND Ultimate Jeans
The Black Bear Brand Factory Store
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