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"SUGI" Camo Denim
(ONGOING) A Fashion Collection inspired by my Multicultural Influence
Denim Pant drafted, modeled, and rendered with CLO3D
Fabric Pattern designed with Photoshop
Introduction
For the next product launch for my label YUJI YASUDA, I wanted to venture into the fashion industry. As someone who’s always been into fashion and has experience tailoring and sewing my own garments, I wanted to pursue something beyond just a screen-printed graphic tee. Not that there's anything wrong with graphic tees, but I wanted to make something from scratch that I could wholly say was designed by me.
I’ve always prided myself on my individuality. Starting a design label under my own name was a deliberate choice to showcase myself as both a person and a designer. A large part of who I am is being an American-raised Japanese immigrant, and I want that multicultural influence to be evident in my work.
Recently, I was introduced to deer hunting by a close friend. During these hunts, I wore Real-Tree camo pants that I found appealing not just for their practicality but also for their street fashion potential. This experience inspired me to incorporate a similar aesthetic into my own designs.
To bring this vision to life, I decided that the core of my first ever clothing collection would be an original pattern fabric—a Japanese take on American camouflage. Brands like Real-Tree use photographic elements of trees, leaves, and sticks from American forestry to create photorealistic camouflage patterns. Inspired by my family’s lineage of Japanese Cedar (杉 Sugi) farmers, I aim to create a similar effect using elements of Japanese forestry. This will not only reflect my heritage but also bring a unique personal touch to traditional camo designs.
Designing the Camo
I started off the design process with the original Camo pattern since that was going to be the core of the collection.
The process was pretty straight-forward:
Step 1: Gather photos of Japanese Cedar leaves, branches, and bark
Step 2: Bring in the subjects into Adobe Photoshop and arrange into the pattern
Step 3: Make adjustments to the shading, color, etc to create a uniform look across the elements
Step 1: Gathering Elements
Immediately the project proved harder than expected. Ideally, I’d want to collect my own samples of Japanese Cedar branches, leaves, etc. and scan them into a white background for easy masking, but as a broke college student that wasn't attainable. This lead me to the next best option: the internet.
Surprisingly, it’s very difficult to find a high quality scan of a Japanese Cedar on the internet. Since a simple Google images search wasn’t working, I started looking at scientific databases. Pretty quickly I discovered JSTOR, a digital library providing access to academic journals, books, and primary sources across various disciplines, primarily used by researchers, scholars, and students. Here I was able to find numerous examples of exactly what I wanted.
But when I tried opening up the images, I was met with this message:
I remembered seeing a Reddit post years ago about how most professors and researchers are happy to share their research with people and all you have to do is ask. So, I asked. I found the contacts for the owners of each of the images– some professors, some scientists, some museum coordinators– and wrote to them.
It only took 15 hours for me to get a reply.
Thanks to the generosity of the Barnes Foundation, I know had access to high-resolution scans of various Cryptomeria Japonica (Japanese Cedar) specimens.
Designing the Pattern
I first needed to prep all of the scans by masking out the specimens. To clean up the tape that was used to hold down the specimens onto the paper, I used the Clone Stamp tool. I picked out my 3 favorite scans and prepped them all for use. I made sure to have diversity in my picks to ensure my pattern wouldn't be too flat.
I brought all of the elements into a seperate 24" x 24" Photoshop document. I decided on doing a 2 feet x 2 feet tile by inspecting different Real-Tree clothing items in the hunting section at an Academy Sports and seeing how they were tiled.
Pattern Breakdown
Background
I made the pattern tile layer by layer, so before I used any of the specimens I created a base background using Photoshop's various textured brushes. I knew this layer would be mostly covered so not much precision was used.
Foreground Trunks
These would act as the primary point of interest in the pattern. I strategically placed them to be evenly dispersed throughout the pattern as to not create "holes" in the pattern. Photoshop's pattern preview mode automatically adjusted the pattern to be tilable by making elements that exceed the border come in from the other side. If part of an object goes past the left border, that part would insert itself from the right border.
Foreground Leaves
For the first layer of leaves, I focused soley on covering any abrupt ends of the trunks and branches. This created a much more seamless look throughout the camo.
Background Trunks
I then added more trunks to the background behind the main trunks, and used Gaussian Blur to create more depth.
Foreground Trunk Shadows
Adding shadows to the trunks in the foreground created further separation between the two layers. This step created an extra pop that increased the realism of the camo.
Additional Cones
To add a bit more detail and texture, I added additional cones.
Color Grade
The final step was to color grade the camo to achieve the final look of the pattern.
Getting a Fabric Sample
After I finalized my pattern design, I vectorized it and sent it to my manufacturer to create a strike-off sample of my pattern on some example fabrics. I asked for my supplier's heaviest GSM denim fabric and canvas fabric.
I received my sample a few weeks later and got to finally see what my design would look like in real life. I liked the texture of the denim a lot more, but the print came out bright and warm.
I decided to explore the denim option further to order another strike-off. But first, I would have to adjust the digital file of the pattern to accommodate for the effects of the printer. To do this, I opened up the pattern file on Photoshop, and created an adjustment layer over the pattern. Using this adjustment layer, I changed light and color values until the digital version of the pattern looked just like the denim strike-off. This adjustment layer represents the effects of the printer. I then made another adjustment layer between the pattern layer and the first adjustment layer, and made changes to the light and color until I achieved a look I was satisfied with. Finally, I deleted the initial adjustment layer, which left a cooler, darker version of the pattern which would offset the printer's effects.
Desired Look
Adjusted look to offset the printer effects
Using this adjusted pattern I ordered a new strike-off, this time with an even heavier fabric that my supplier just got in stock.
*ONGOING PROJECT, TO BE CONTINUED*
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