Have you ever wondered how many hands a garment passes through before it reaches your hands? This time, we'd like to introduce you to one place where fashion is born, passing through many hands and places.

Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, is one of Japan's leading textile production areas. Written Afterwards designer Yoshikazu Yamagata visited Sawa Toshikazu of Tex. Box, who works in fashion using a technique called "needle punch" in Kiryu. The two first worked together on creating something in 2012. Yamagata first asked Sawa to "needle punch clothes onto tatami mats" for a look featured in Written Afterwards' Spring/Summer 2013 collection, which featured the Seven Lucky Gods as its theme and expressed fashion with a grandiose power beyond people's imagination.

Looking back on that time, Sawa smiles and says, "I thought it was stupid to nail clothes to tatami mats (laughs), but it was fun when I tried it. I enjoy communicating with designers who help me discover such infinite material combinations, so I never get bored of needle punching, even after many years of doing it."



The material to be patterned is placed on top of the fabric, and then countless pinholder-shaped needles are thrust repeatedly at high speed to entangle the fibers and create a pattern. When asked about its appeal, Sawa said with a straight gaze, "While fabrics are broadly categorized as 'woven' or 'knitted', needle punch is a technique that is neither. I saw potential in that. You can even combine weaving and knitting, and there are no restrictions on creating patterns. This is something that rarely happens with weaving or knitting."

Meanwhile, Yamagata replied from a designer's perspective, "Needle punching has a feeling similar to free painting, and I think that feeling suits me. What's appealing is that the pattern you apply to the fabric on the spot is then needle punched as is and the finished product is created."



In fact, on the day Yamagata visited Sawa's workshop, a small accident occurred. A few meters of silk cloth had arrived at Sawa's workshop from Yamagata's atelier, with countless colorful scraps of fabric, ranging in size from 1 cm square to the size of a palm, laid out on the cloth. When the craftsman was about to roll up the cloth and put it through the needle punch machine, the cloth came undone, and all of the countless scraps that had been laid out on the silk cloth fell to the floor.



The scraps scattered like cherry blossom petals, and Yamagata had to rearrange them on the spot using the layout image he had saved on his smartphone. Nevertheless, the Sawas and Yamagatas spent around an hour rearranging the scraps once again, and after another needle punching process, the textile was completed.

Yamagata reflected on the process, saying, "The process of arranging scraps on fabric, like we did today, is similar to the feeling you get when painting a picture or creating a collage or other artwork. It's like the image unfolds as you move your hands."

The two gazed upon the finished fabric. There, the scraps, laid out like swatches (fabric sample books), had become one with the base fabric through the needle punching process. However, having been punched countless times with 10,000 needles, the fabric is not exactly the same as when it was laid out. The colors have softened, the pattern silhouette has slightly changed, and it shows various expressions. The "live feeling" of seeing new expressions emerge before your eyes is what makes needle punching unique, and it may be one of the reasons why Sawa is so fascinated by it, never getting bored even after working with it for many years.



"Sometimes I add a little something fun that only the maker will understand," says Sawa with a mischievous smile. "Even if the specifications call for the string to be straight, I might curl it just a little. I also enjoy making samples like this because I get to have a good exchange with the designer. I want to always approach this job with the mindset of a beginner. That's why I put the 'green leaf' mark on it." As Sawa says this, I look at the needle punch machine and see that there is indeed a green leaf mark on it, like a car. This episode conveyed Sawa's excitement as she worked on needle punch.

The second half of the talk was about "Japanese fashion and global fashion from different perspectives."