Why we chose them
COLLECT was founded in Kojima, Okayama, in 1992 as a specialist denim textile company, almost two decades before Japan Blue Jeans appeared. It wasn’t a fashion company looking for good Japanese denim; the clothing brands grew out of the people developing the denim itself. Kojima, globally recognized as the birthplace and capital of Japanese denim, was the natural place to start it.
The area around Kurashiki had spent generations working with cotton. An extraordinary community of specialist Japanese spinners, rope dyers, weavers, finishers, and sewing workshops naturally flourished around it, helping cement Okayama as one of the world's great centres of production.
COLLECT grew as a part of that ecosystem. From its inception, the company focused on developing fabric rather than only producing denim. In 1993, still in its infancy, COLLECT acquired five old power looms and put them back into use. Today, its Kojima weaving facility still operates vintage Toyoda GL-9 shuttle looms, machines that nearly became obsolete but were kept around for parts for more modernized setups. These old looms are not efficient. They produce less than one-third of the daily output their modern replacements can. Toyoda GL-9s require skilled operators, continual adjustment, and far more time and attention. And yet, they’ve survived in specialty workshops like COLLECT because of what they can “inefficiently” do.
With proper experience and skill, an operator can manipulate speed, tension, and construction to create density and texture. All of that subtle irregularity is worked into the fabric in a way the Toyoda GL-9’s modern replacements can’t. Today’s machines are built for efficiency and streamlining production, eliminating the telltale characteristics Toyoda GL-9s are known for. And this is where selvedge denim still lives: when the shuttle passes the weft back and forth across a narrow strip of cloth and produces the self-finished edge.
But COLLECT's expertise begins before anything even hits the loom. The company develops denim from cotton and yarn, considering everything from spinning and dyeing to weaving, construction, and finishing. The goal is to develop character in the fabric. Decisions at every step determine how the denim feels when it is new, and how it breaks in over time. How it softens, fades, and develops after years of wear. That is what the world holds its breath for, and will pay top dollar to find.
COLLECT started off developing fabrics its textile customers weren't always ready to use. Hiroki Kishimoto, who spent years at the company experimenting with development, began taking COLLECT’s finished jeans on a tour around international exhibitions. Buyers started asking about the jeans themselves, not just the denim.
Japan Blue Jeans followed in 2010, born from a growing market awareness about selvedge. The textile became a way for COLLECT to take its denim from fabric to finished product, rather than waiting for someone else to do it. That lineage also connects directly to Momotaro Jeans, which the same group developed earlier. COLLECT remains set apart and a bit unusual in an industry where brands get attention for their name rather than the company behind their cloth. Here, the order is reversed. First came the denim. The brands came later.
