The women's casual pants market is said to lack hit items, but since the beginning of last fall, brightly colored pants have been quietly gaining attention.

At its own exhibition last summer, Towa (Kojima, Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture), Japan's largest washing and processing company, proposed brightly dyed pants. Nishie Denim, a large hand-washing processing plant in Ibara City, Okayama Prefecture, has also received high praise for its brightly colored pants. As these two companies are washing and processing plants, they do not manufacture products but rather dye them.

In particular, Nishie Denim's garment-dyed pants, made at its domestic factory, have been highly praised. Blue denim is typically woven with indigo-dyed cotton warp threads and undyed cotton weft threads. Although the threads are indigo-dyed, the dye does not penetrate to the center of the fiber, resulting in a state known as "naka-baku" or "shin-baku." The blue-dyed outer layer peels off with friction and washing, revealing the white center. This is the principle behind denim fading.

Nishie denim is processed using product dyeing, but by leaving the center of the fibers undyed and white, it recreates the same faded look as blue denim.

Bright colors were already popular in the fall and winter, and it looks like colors will be even brighter this spring and summer. It has been several years since young women started to move away from jeans. Can bright colored pants help make a comeback, even if only a little?