No wonder humans find ways to automate every process under the sun. The amount of labour it takes to naturally extract indigo is crazy.
Here's another video worth seeing. This one is about Adire. These textiles are incredible and the amount of manual work that goes into their production is astounding. I think it's worth considering a world with less automation but what would it do to the cost of fabric? This cloth should be very expensive:
I have a full-size, shuttle loom. It belonged to my Grandmother. It's likely a far cry from the kimono loom in the video above, but I plan to get it up and running this summer. Imagine working with selvage denim made in-house? Imagine wearing jeans made from cloth woven just up the street?
I've been thinking about this idea for a while and was really excited to come across the videos from the Japanese denim brand Momotaro. They even dye their own cloth! I won't get too carried away (yet), but in house cloth production, even on a supplemental scale, is something I'd really like to work towards.
Judging from the videos I found on Youtube, Momotaro denim isn't exclusively a hand-woven denim company either. At 8 hours of labour per meter and about 3 meters of fabric per pair of jeans, I can only imagine how many years it would take to fill a store let alone keep it stocked.
The video below is also from Momotaro. Look at those machines! I like this level of automation -the machines are assisting the people in contrast to the videos I posted earlier this week where the opposite seems to be true. Very inspiring!
