Calibrating your wardrobe for the Autumn is all about finding those unique, warm and comfortable pieces that look and feel right in the widest possible range of situations. Samurai's newest crewneck sweatshirt fits that mould perfectly, and it has been entirely made of Samurai Japanese cotton. The premium Samurai cotton is refined like your best business casual sweaters, but it's still, you know, Samurai, so it has tons of texture and character.
The Samurai Cotton project is the own obsession of Nogami-San, the Samurai Jeans owner, to produce garments with Japanese cotton. But what makes this Japanese cotton so unique? Well, it is plucked piece by piece carefully, and the team works around the typhoons and heavy rains that hit the Sasayama (Hyogo prefecture) area each fall. The plants are planted, weeded, and harvested by hand, refusing to use fertilizers or pesticides of any type. All work is done by a group of Samurai employees, a few dedicated customers, and a handful of friendly Sasayama locals. For this reason, producing sweatshirts made of Samurai cotton is super expensive and time-consuming, but the result is an extremely soft and high-quality cotton.
Samurai has done his best to produce the best possible sweatshirt. They opted for a #10 slub yarn of their Samurai proprietary Japanese cotton harvested by hand, and they weaved the fabric in Wakayama, on vintage looms. For the construction, the brand chose an old sewing workshop located in Kyoto. They created a 2 needles binder neck and used a 60's vintage Union Special flat seamer 36200 sewing machine for all the seams.
This Kuromame version incorporates a natural dyeing technique that has been made in Kyoto and that is very uncommon and would yield unique fades: Both the warp and weft feature a charcoal colour, dyed with black beans (kuromame).
Samurai jeans have become a legend in the Japanese denim scene. Created in Osaka by Toru Nogami in 1997, Samurai represents the perfection of Japanese tradition, with its iconography of Sengoku-era Samurais and the search for the best and nothing but the best through materials, artisan garment-making techniques and unique detailing.
