Japan's True Blue Tradition

Call it an antidote to fast fashion. Japanese jeans hand-dyed with natural indigo and weaved on a clackety vintage loom, then sold at a premium to global denim connoisseurs.

Unlike their mass-produced cousins, the tough garments crafted at the small Momotaro Jeans factory in south-west Japan are designed to be worn for decades, and come with a lifetime repair warranty.

On site, Mr Yoshiharu Okamoto gently dips cotton strings into a tub of deep blue liquid, which stains his hands and nails as he repeats the process.

The cotton is imported from Zimbabwe, but the natural indigo used is harvested in Japan - its colour far richer than synthetic imitations, according to him.

He calls it a "time-consuming and costly" method, commonly used to dye kimonos in the 17th-to 19th-century Edo period.

Momotaro Jeans was established in 2006 by Japan Blue, one of a few dozen denim producers in the seaside town of Kojima renowned for their artisan quality.

"We're very strict about all aspects of manufacturing," says Japan Blue's president Masataka Suzuki. That includes "whether the sewing is done properly and whether the dye is beautiful", making local craftspeople with traditional manufacturing skills indispensable.