Sei Watanabe at Yaccomaricard Tokyo's head office.
The theme for our spring and summer collection is Power of the Earth.
We felt a sense of frustration after being stuck at home for nearly two years because of the pandemic so we wanted to draw energy from the natural world and look positively at where we now stand with nature. Using nature’s flow, movement and scale our design team, inspired by these elements, softened our usual linear and straight hand-worked details. We added cotton lace trim; undulating waves of cotton cord embroidery and raw edge quilt detailing.
The fabric was very important in this mission so we have experimented with mixing different weights of linen and cotton, each taking on garment dye in its unique way. We played with fabric opacity, using fine voile for a soft airy look and pairing it with cotton lawn, or layering it and leaving raw edging. We have a fabulous and bold globular print collection and perfected a new curvy pleat technique for the lightweight voile.
We couldn’t celebrate a Power of the Earth collection without first examining our role in ecology and sustainable processes. For many years our garment dye technique, the wastewater of which is safe enough to fill fish ponds in our factory grounds, has led the way in this. We’ve always looked innovatively at ways to use our cutting waste however in this collection we put a real focus on repurposing excess fabric. Whether that's excess trims being utilized or block prints added to breathe new life into the unused fabric. This is an area we are growing into and hope to develop in future collections.
We felt it was important to show a distinction between the collections depending on the manufacturing country, that meant utilizing what we can get within each country, reducing our carbon footprint and showcasing fabulous techniques and workmanship unique to them.
Our garment dye and pin tucking are distinctively Thai, our hand-loomed mul mul fabric unique to India and we are excited to be working with a Japanese itajime shibori workshop on a gorgeous trouser later in the season.
My own personal highlight is the cotton lace trim collection which takes me back to when Yaccomaricard first started in the late 70s, cotton lace was a big part of the collection back then. I hope our spring/summer collection is a breath of fresh air and these pieces will be part of your travels wherever they take you.
