When I last was in Lille (France), I dropped by at one of my favorite ‘Lille’ stores ‘Serie Noire‘. A great selection of brands, always balancing on the edge with labels like Rick Owens, Balmain, Acne Studios Dior Homme, Haider Ackermann, Goti, Kris Van Assche and Aurélie Bidermann to name a few.

Not really looking to shop, but always open for new discoveries, I found some amazing scarfs, ‘love at first sight’ type. You know what I mean…

The scarfs are from Suzusan, a label by the Japanese designer Hiroyuki Murase. His family, the Murase have been hand-adorning refined fabrics using traditional and complex techniques for over 100 years. SHIBORI is a Japanese textile finishing technique which, even though it can look back on a tradition spanning centuries at the island state, is virtually unknown in the Western world. As the oldest son of the Murase family, after his studies in design, Hiroyuki wanted to combine his families amazing craft with his ideas on texture, fabrics in design and fashion.

Hiroyuki started to create the first scarves from his family hand-made fabrics in Japan in 2007 and besides the fact that the scarfs are fabulous ( incredibly soft because of the cashmere wool, tactile, light-weighted with stunning contrast colors), production is done by fair trade principles. By keeping this tradition, the label strengthens the families craftwork as a profession and contributes to end the decades-long decline of this textile art in Japan. 

I bought one, off course. Due to the handmade, exclusive Japanese technique, they don’t come cheap (400 euro). They’re worth it. believe me.

©ALL photos by Kate Stockman_THE SQUID STORIES except mentioned differently.