If you’re not content wearing indigo on your legs, Brooklyn-based retailer Hickoree’s has your neck and chest covered with their The Hill-Side collaboration collection with Japanese outfit Journal Standard. The collection, available online, and in person at Hickoree’s in the US and Journal Standard in Japan, features an array of indigo-dyed shirts and ties.
Vicken Donikian of Hickoree’s (whose co-founders Emil and Sandy Corsillo also started the Hill-Side in 2009) said the collaboration was born after Journal Standard opened a retail spot in Omotesando, Tokyo.
Journal Standard invited Hickoree’s/the Hill-Side to take part in the opening, which eventually lead to the teams working together on “CPO shirts in a range of camouflage patterns, twill chinos in selvedge cotton, button down shirts in warm winter fabrics, and some incredible A-1 Moto jackets in indigo denim and brown duck canvas.” Donikian said, “this spring’s collection of discharge printed shirts and skein-dyed indigo shirts and ties are an extension of that on-going relationship with Journal Standard.”
Donikian said indigo was an obvious choice when it came to this latest collaboration, “We love the richness of fresh indigo and the way it fades over the lifespan of a garment, but all indigo-dyed shirts are not created equally. These aren’t just your typical oxford garment-dyed in a huge industrial vat of indigo.”
The shirts come in three models: the J.S. Homestead, TH-S Inigo Palm Leaf, and TH-S Linen Indigo (which is unfortunately sold out). Donikian continues, “Our J.S. Homestead label two-pocket work shirts are made from skein-dyed ‘Matsuaka Momen’ fabrics. Traditionally reserved for kimonos, this fabric is entirely handmade in Japan using a laborious process of hand-dipping skeins, or loops, of cotton barn in indigo vats. Indigo yarns of different hues are then woven together on antique, narrow looms into characteristic stripes and plaids.
“You can’t make a shirt with the usual construction techniques from fabric this narrow, and so we had to come up with a shirt pattern that doubled the number of fabric panels, which in turn mean that it was harder to match patterns in the final product. The final result is a tour de force of creative construction and pattern matching, and the beautiful, uneven variations in the fabric make for some outstanding shirts.”
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The ties, in varying plaid patterns, are also made from these fabrics and dyed in a similar fashion.
Check out the full collection on Hickoree’s website.
