BOTANICAL DYED "MOSS" — Bringing Japan's Green into Denim

Walk through a Japanese garden or along the grounds of an old temple, and you'll find a quiet green spreading over stone and earth. That green is moss — modest, yet it gives the landscape a sense of depth. Vivid when wet with rain, subdued when dry, it remains in place through every season.

In Japan, this green has long been known as koke-iro — the color of moss. BOTANICAL DYED "MOSS" is an attempt to express that color on denim. A shade cherished in Japan's nature and culture, now given form as denim.

FABRIC

The Greens That Japanese People Have Seen in Moss

The green of moss is never just one color. Depending on how light falls, the level of humidity, and the time of year, even the same patch of moss can shift in impression. The Japanese language has long distinguished these subtle differences with care.

Koke-iro captures the green of moss itself. Oi-midori ("aged green") describes a green that has deepened over time. Chitose-midori ("thousand-year green") is the name given to a green that endures without fading across the ages. From a single plant, this many color names were born — a testament to how deeply moss has been woven into daily life in Japan.

Could that delicate world of color be expressed in denim? Could moss be extracted and used as a dye? We began by working through those questions, one step at a time.

Depth of Color — Created by Botanical Dye

Colors dyed with botanical dye carry a depth that can't be captured in a single hue. The reason lies in the structure of the pigments found in natural dyes.

Dyes extracted from plants contain multiple types of pigment molecules. Each absorbs and reflects light at slightly different wavelengths. When that reflected light hits the surface texture of the fibers, it doesn't bounce back in one direction — it scatters slightly before returning. This multi-layered light interference creates what we call yuragi — a subtle fluctuation that keeps even a seemingly solid color from ever appearing flat.

In the case of moss dye, this yuragi manifests as a sense of calm. Under natural outdoor light, the color appears bright and translucent; under indoor lighting, it takes on a quiet depth. The same green, yet its impression shifts gently with the environment — a quality that synthetic single-pigment dyes simply cannot reproduce. It is a characteristic unique to botanical dye.

Preserving the Color of Moss for Years to Come

Naturally derived color is beautiful, but it comes with vulnerabilities — fading from sunlight and color loss over time. To ensure that the gentle green drawn from moss can be enjoyed as an everyday garment for years, we employ a dyeing method using our own specially developed assisting agents.

First, the fabric is base-dyed using our proprietary reactive dye process, establishing a stable foundation of color. Then, the natural moss dye is carefully layered on top. This approach achieves both the depth of color granted by nature and the lasting stability made possible by modern technology.

Boiling, filtering, dyeing — each step is carried out by hand with care. Because the material is so delicate, even slight differences in temperature or timing can significantly alter the resulting shade. Reaching the right green requires intuition built over years of experience. It is at the intersection of nature's gifts and the skill of artisans that the color of BOTANICAL DYED "MOSS" is born.

BOTANICAL DYED "MOSS" — 3 Styles

The MOSS collection, finished with moss botanical dye, is offered in one jacket and two jeans styles. A gentle green that brings a natural depth to the way you dress — presented in three silhouettes.