If This Slow Fashion Brand Won’t Talk About Its Bangin' Collabs, I Will

Almost everything you need to know about orSlow is on a small woven label sewn into the bottom of a relaxed, lightweight chambray work shirt in its new Saturdays NYC collaboration. This small ornamentation informs us that its fabrics are woven in Japan, it was founded in 2005, and, most importantly, that its clothes are “made for long affection.” 

Really, all clothes should be produced for long-term affection. But in today’s era of fast fashion and declining quality control, we know that isn’t the case and it’s part of the reason why orSlow is so vital. Another reason is that the clothes are, simply, great.

Zoom out on orSlow’s debut Saturdays NYC link-up, and you’ll notice the aforementioned work shirt’s loose fit with an exaggerated curving hem and military-inspired branding, perfect to pair with the collaborative military fatigue pants, an orSlow staple cut wide with a high rise, offered in either a lived-in-feeling washed cotton sateen or the more rigid herringbone cotton. This kind of stuff is orSlow’s bread-and-butter: classic, timeless, vintage-feeling Americana recreated in small Japanese factories using vintage shuttle looms and natural dyes and priced fairly.

Clothing this detailed and durable takes time to produce. It’s slow fashion. Hence the name, orSlow. 

But Saturdays NYC does gently take orSlow out of its comfort zone, dyeing a pair of oxford cloth painter pants in rich aquamarine as opposed to orSlow’s typically muted period-correct colors. That’s just a small departure from the regular programming, though, and for the most part Saturday’s leaves the two-decade-old clothing label to do what it does best. And it’s not the only collaboration this year where that’s been the case, although you wouldn’t know it from orSlow’s infrequent Instagram posts nor its bare-bones website. 

The humble menswear maker keeps its various collaborations on the d-low, but they’re too meticulously made and approachably priced to be gatekept. These include a tightly cropped denim jacket with matching wide-leg ripped jeans mimicking the patina of 50 years of wear to celebrate Japanese fashion retail behemoth BEAMS’ 50th birthday, working with the Colorado boutique Canoe Club on light-washed herringbone twill set informed by vintage French workwear, and custom wide-leg jeans for a king of natty fabrics, Evan Kinori, who complimented how the brand’s founder, Ichiro Nakatsu, has a “passion for only making products that he finds meaningful.”

And there are more orSlow collaborations hiding out there, each as scrupulously made and brilliantly wearable as the other, I just haven’t found them yet. It’s not like orSlow makes them easy to find.

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