When Japanese designers Mitsunori Ishimatsu and Miho Kuroda traveled to India in the early aughts, their team met artists craftsmen making the country’s most beautiful textiles – liquid silks, polished cottons and hand-woven linens a treat for the eye and hand.
Delicate stitchwork danced across it all – a final flourish from the masters of its creation. It was here the duo saw firsthand the possibilities of fabric… and understood the rarity of careful, manual work.
Founding their label, AODress, in 2009, Mitsunori and Miho sought to achieve a style that reinterprets the cultural textile traditions through their own contemporary sensibility.
Their pieces are produced entirely in Japan using hand-spun fabrics, primarily from India. Combining the rich hues of navy and black with delicate stitchery, their works hold the Japanese tenet of Shibui – the tranquility found in subdued but well-made goods.
While their styles read as simplistic at first blush, the touch of the hand draws you closer. On an intimate level, find tiny florals scattered across a cotton shirt or patchwork stitchery on a tunic. A sumptuous velvet coat grips the imagination with a glint of beading across the bodice. To be wrapped up in pieces imbued with the presence and character of the handmade is to really consider and cherish the effort that went into each and every detail – what a pleasure for the skin and mind both.
