The Birth of the "Plant Marble"

For the 2026 collection, the “Plant Marble” was created in collaboration with WUY, using traditional plant-dyeing techniques. This year’s pattern is a one-of-a-kind marble, made by applying ink extracted from indigo leaves and logwood onto paper.

We spoke with them about the story behind its creation.

— We heard that this time you used Japanese indigo leaves (tadeai) and logwood for the “Plant Marble.” Could you tell us about the characteristics of each, and why you chose them?
Among plant-based dyes, it’s actually quite rare to achieve the kind of “blue” that eit swim requested.
Especially a deep blue like this—indigo is really the only way to express it. That’s part of what makes indigo dyeing so special.

As for logwood, it can produce a wide range of nuanced tones—from charcoal-like dark shades to purples and deep navy. By combining it with different minerals, you can shift the color in subtle ways.
If you really break it down, it’s all chemistry, with formulas and everything (laughs), but I work more from experience and intuition.

— We understand that you grow your own indigo plants. What kind of dyeing methods do you use?There are many different ways to dye with indigo.
Some methods involve aidate—a traditional process of fermenting materials like sukumo (composted indigo leaves) to produce the dye. Others include fermenting fresh leaves to create chiden-ai, or boiling dried leaves through a method called ni-dashi to extract color.

We mainly use this boiled method, which is actually the simplest and something you can even do at home.
We grow traditional Japanese indigo (tadeai) together with local farmers, harvest it, and dry the leaves.

We also create a paste-like indigo by drying sedimented dye under the sun, turning it into a powder called aijō, and then dissolving it again to use like paint.
This is the material we used for eit swim’s Botanical Print, together with the liquid dye.

— How do you usually source materials other than indigo?
Through our upcycling project “Re:Zome,” we collect discarded plant materials from restaurants, hotels, facilities, shops, and even households, and transform them into dyes.
We’ve used things like grape pomace from wineries, used coffee grounds from cafés, and even leftover hops from breweries. Sometimes we receive imperfect shiitake mushrooms as well.
When we make dye from them, it even smells like cooking dashi-broth (laughs).

Our studio is located in Izumi City, Osaka, an area rich in forests. There are many lumber mills nearby, so we’re also able to use discarded branches and leaves from trees like cypress and cedar.

— This time, you created the pattern using plant-based ink on paper. What does working on paper allow you to express?
By drawing, we can achieve expressions that are different from dyeing, and incorporate a wider range of natural colors.
For this project, we wanted to capture a sense of “fluctuation” and the subtle transitions found in nature, so drawing felt like the right approach.

Printing these hand-drawn works onto fabric is actually our first attempt with eit swim.