By sharing the various processes involved with making finished garments, I hope to convey two things - one is the inextricable involvement of the human hand and eye along the way, and the other is to shed light on the alchemy that is involved with spinning, dyeing and textile creation.

It’s impossible to ignore the extremely demanding nature of garment production; beginning with agriculture-borne fibers, the logistics of processing raw materials into something spinnable, spinning the yarn, sizing the yarn for weaving, weaving the cloth, dyeing the fiber (or the yarn or the fabric or the garment itself), finishing the cloth, cutting the cloth, sewing the garment, and finally finishing the garment. With documenting these processes, I hope we impart some aspect of the metaphysical weight of finished products, or at least cause you to wonder a bit deeper about their creation and all those who play an essential part.

In this notes post (more photos & video found within), we visit one of the great unsung heroes in garment creation, the yarn dyer. When a  specific shade or tone is desired, the responsibility often falls upon the yarn dyeing mill to achieve the exact color that may have been referenced or pulled from a decades old archive. In these seldom seen backrooms, where pigment powders are measured and the alchemical work of color creation takes place, there’s something primal revealed by man’s age-old quest for color. Armed with spoons, pigments, a scale and scribbled formulas - the whole of the color spectrum is possible through infinite tweaks and formulations.

The two featured fabrics from these yarn dyers (worsted wool puppytooth and linen check) involve two types of yarn - the solid colored yarns were dyed at this mill in Ichinomiya. The heathered charcoal color was top dyed, or dyed at the fiber level before spinning the yarn, which was done at another mill entirely. This complex and increasingly rare process, like many others, is at risk of extinction in the hyperspeed race for faster and cheaper means of production.