Welcome back to the Kuroto Journal.
There are easier ways to make clothes.
That thought keeps coming back to me whenever I get properly interested in a piece we’re bringing into Kuroto. Somewhere along the line, somebody has usually made a decision that makes absolutely no sense from the point of view of speed, efficiency or cost.
And, more often than not, that’s where it starts to get interesting.
We spend a lot of time talking about shuttle looms and Japanese selvedge denim, but denim is only part of this story. Some of the same stubbornness, old machinery and accumulated knowledge exists in Japanese knitwear.
Which brings me to loopwheel.
More specifically, it brings me to the heavyweight hoodies from The Strike Gold that will shortly be arriving at Kuroto.
And these things are serious.
What exactly is loopwheel?
In Japan, the machines are known as tsuriami-ki: tsuri meaning hanging, ami knitting and ki machine.
The name comes from the fact that the machines themselves are suspended from beams above the factory floor. Kanekichi Industries, one of the specialist Wakayama manufacturers still using them, describes how the process keeps the yarn relaxed rather than stretching or pulling it during knitting.
That matters.
Modern knitting machinery is extraordinarily good at doing what modern machinery is supposed to do: making consistent fabric quickly and efficiently.
Loopwheel machines belong to another age entirely.
They knit slowly, in the round, keeping the yarn under remarkably little tension. Rather than forcing production through the machine as quickly as possible, the process allows the yarn to remain relaxed. This allows air to be incorporated into the fabric, creating the distinctive softness and responsiveness of traditional tsuriami cloth.
And you can feel it.
That’s the thing that gets lost when you start talking about machines, cylinders and rotations per minute. This isn’t interesting simply because the machinery is old. Old machinery can make rubbish too.
It’s interesting because of what the machinery does to the cloth.
You get density without the fabric feeling dead. Weight without board-like stiffness. There is a softness and loft to good loopwheel fabric that’s difficult to reconcile with how substantial it feels in your hands.
The circular machines also produce fabric as a continuous tube, meaning it can be used to construct garments without conventional side seams. Kanekichi Industries confirms that the circular construction of the tsuriami-ki produces fabric in a seamless cylindrical form.
It is slow, gloriously inefficient stuff- partly why so little of it is still made.
Why Wakayama?
Wakayama has become synonymous with Japanese loopwheel knitting, and genuine production using these old machines is now increasingly rare.
They aren’t museum pieces being periodically wheeled out for a marketing video. Specialist mills are still using them to make fabric.
And slowly really does mean slowly.
Reporting from the Aigat mill in Wakayama puts traditional loopwheel production at roughly a metre of fabric per hour. The same reporting describes Japan as having the largest remaining concentration of these machines.
Think about that for a moment. An hour. For roughly a metre of fabric.
There is something I love about that.
Not because slowness automatically equals quality. It doesn’t. But because this is manufacturing where increasing the speed would fundamentally change the thing you’re trying to make.
At mills such as Kanekichi Industries, keeping tsuriami production alive also means maintaining machinery whose original manufacturers stopped making it decades ago, while retaining the skilled operators who know how to get the best from it. Kanekichi Industries says the machines require workers with years of experience to operate properly.
It’s inefficient. It’s stubbornly old-fashioned. And that’s rather the point.
Enter The Strike Gold
All of which brings us back to the hoodies.
If you know The Strike Gold, you’ll probably know them first through denim: the textures, the fades and their particular take on Japanese workwear. We have their flagship Keep Earth jeans on our rail, and will be welcoming more fabrics and silhouettes come Spring.
Their heavyweight sweatshirts deserve every bit as much attention.
Because these aren’t delicate reproductions of vintage sportswear that you feel obliged to look after.
These are beasts.
The heavyweight fabric used on versions of The Strike Gold’s loopwheel hoodies comes in at 20.3oz, knitted from 100% cotton, with a heavily triple-brushed interior.
Twenty point three ounces is a fairly meaningless number until you actually pick one up. Then it makes perfect sense.
There is real heft here. Not gimmicky heaviness for the sake of being able to print a bigger number on a product page, but reassuring, substantial weight.
Pull one on and it feels like clothing with a job to do.
Heavy on the outside. Ridiculous on the inside.
The surprise is what happens when you put your hand inside one.
That heavyweight outer fabric gives way to an extensively brushed interior. The Strike Gold’s heavyweight fabric is documented as having a triple-brushed inner face, while the cloth is knitted more tightly than conventional loopwheel sweatshirt fabric to increase its resistance to wind. It’s absurdly comfortable.
There isn’t really a sophisticated way of putting it. For something that looks and feels so tough from the outside, the inside is properly luxurious. And I rather like that contradiction.
It’s one of those pieces you’ll initially buy because you’ve become fascinated by the fabric, the machinery and the construction, then end up reaching for constantly because it’s just incredibly nice to wear.
Which, ultimately, is how good clothing should work.
All the little things
Then you start noticing the details.
There are four-needle flatlock seams, a construction detail rooted firmly in vintage athletic wear. There are 100% cotton drawcords. The heavyweight zips feature substantial metal hardware. Nothing shouts particularly loudly. It doesn’t need to.
That’s something we look for with Kuroto. The best details tend to reveal themselves gradually. You notice the stitching. Then the hardware. Then how a seam has been constructed. Then, six months later, you realise the whole thing has quietly changed as you’ve worn it.
That’s far more interesting to me than a garment that gives you everything it’s got in the first five minutes.
A word about the fit
These are unapologetically influenced by mid-century American athletic wear, and the fit reflects that.
They’re comparatively slim through the body, with the close fit also helping with heat retention.
Specialist retailers note that The Strike Gold’s loopwheel hoodies run small compared with typical US sizing, so this isn’t one where I’d casually order your normal sweatshirt size and hope for the best.
We’ll have proper measurements on the Kuroto product pages when they go live.
Use them. Seriously. A beautiful 20.3oz Japanese loopwheel hoodie isn’t much use if you can’t get the bloody thing over your shoulders. A rule of thumb for now though is that your TSG hoodie size will be a full size up from your usual.
The point of all this
I sometimes worry that talking about heritage machinery can become an end in itself.
Old looms. Old knitting machines. Old sewing machines. Twenty-ounce this. Triple-brushed that.
Interesting, certainly. But none of it matters very much if the finished piece isn’t something you actually want to wear.
And that’s ultimately why I’m excited about these.
Loopwheel isn’t magic. It is simply a slow, demanding way of making fabric that produces particular characteristics that people have decided are worth preserving.
Kanekichi Industries says the relaxed knitting process helps its tsuriami fabric retain its shape and quality over a long period, pointing to vintage sweatshirts made before the mid-1960s that have survived decades of wear.
That’s the bit that matters to me.
Wear one of these hard and it won’t remain pristine. Nor should it. The fabric will soften and settle. The cotton will relax. Eventually it becomes your sweatshirt rather than one taken freshly from a shelf.
That’s the same thing that draws us to great denim. Time improves it.
And maybe that’s the common thread running through quite a lot of what we’re trying to do with Kuroto.
Not nostalgia for its own sake. Not old = good and new = bad.
Just an appreciation for things made by people who have decided that how something is made still matters, even when there are much faster ways of doing it.
The Strike Gold heavyweight loopwheel hoodies will be landing at Kuroto soon.
I cannot wait to get them on the rail.
Mike
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