A Quiet Gray —

Dyed with a Japanese Harvest

Black sesame is deeply woven into Japan's food culture. This small ingredient is the dye behind the latest addition to our BOTANICAL DYED series.

What we set out to express was an understated gray that feels distinctly Japanese. In pursuing that color, we found black sesame — long cherished in Japan.

A gray with an elegance only a pale shade can carry, settling naturally into autumn and winter wardrobes. This is BOTANICAL DYED "BLACK SESAME."

FABRIC

A Hundred Grays — A Japanese Sense of Beauty

In Japan, gray has long been called nezumi-iro — literally, "mouse color" — and around it grew a rich culture of color. During the Edo period (1603–1868), under sumptuary laws that prohibited extravagance and showy dress, people found and delighted in fine nuances within subdued shades such as browns and grays.

So rich was this palette that it came to be summed up in the phrase shijuhatcha hyakunezumi — "forty-eight browns and a hundred grays," the numbers simply meaning "countless." Color names such as Rikyu-nezumi (a green-tinged gray associated with the tea master Sen no Rikyu) and gin-nezumi ("silver gray") are still handed down today as traditional Japanese colors.

A Japanese sense of beauty that finds pleasure in the slightest differences of tone within restrained colors. What BLACK SESAME aimed for, too, was a gray that is calm and never overstated, yet holds a quiet depth.

For the dye, we use 100% Japanese-grown black sesame. Although nearly all sesame used in Japan today is imported, we were committed to a domestic material to express a gray that is uniquely Japanese.

A Pale, Clear Japanese Gray — Drawn from Nature

For BLACK SESAME, we use a botanical dye technique that combines natural and synthetic dyes. Through a special dyeing method that uses no mordants — the fixing agents traditionally used in plant dyeing — it draws out beautiful color and rich character from the pigments of black sesame.

A Japanese Aesthetic, Carried into Today

Just as people in the Edo period wore and enjoyed grays within a limited palette, BLACK SESAME carries that sense of beauty forward. Not a color meant to stand out, but one that invites you to savor the slightest differences. We have distilled the rich sensibility discovered by the Japanese of the past into denim made for everyday life today.

BOTANICAL DYED "BLACK SESAME" — 3 Styles

The BLACK SESAME collection, finished with black sesame botanical dye, is offered in one denim jacket and two styles of jeans. Paired with a cowhide leather patch dyed to complement its gray, it comes in three silhouettes.