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The Dye Hard Dye Haus

EVANGELISM FASHION SEO
August 14, 2017

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning like any other, but

already the heads around the boardroom table at
SpectraTees HQ were bowed with foreheads furrowed in
deep concentration and stern focus. A military green
garment dyed t-shirt lay spread across the table,
elephant-like, in the middle of the room. All eyes pressed
against its rumpled silhouette and darted across the soft

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creases of its simple form. Whispers ensued. Nods were

nodded. Notes taken. The fuss, that early Tuesday
morning had to do with a t-shirt that the Spectra skunk
works team had sent to the decision makers in the
boardroom for consideration. The skunk works team is
sometimes affectionately known as “Black Ops” and this
time it seemed, they had truly earned their moniker. What
lay across the boardroom table was clear and irrefutable
evidence that you could mature the hand of a t-shirt to a
silky soft perfection without sacri cing wear-ability,
lifespan or quality. The brows weren’t furrowed because of
this, indeed, this was cause for elation, the brows were
furrowed because Black Ops didn’t want to comb or card
the knit, they didn’t want to change the cotton grade, the
supplier, nd new yarns or modify the design. They
wanted to dye t-shirts differently and nothing more. What
they had produced, through dyeing alone, would
revolutionize Spectra’s t-shirt lines–both inventory and
private label–and open up a can of fashion worms which
will never be closed.

To Live And Dye In The Skunk-

Works
SpectraTees is a large company with a number of discrete
divisions and specialty departments, though none is as

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secretive nor peculiar as the skunk works which is

secreted away off-campus and dedicated to one task
alone–research and experimentation. If there is a Spectra
t-shirt you love, it is because the gurus in the skunk works
loved it rst. If there is a go-to printing canvas from the
Spectra stable that a printer cannot do without it is
because the skunk-works developed it rst and nurtured
it into existence. The skunk-works remains the giddy
impetus behind all of Spectra’s unique designs and their
latest endeavor had returned something truly unexpected
and brilliant. What they had come back with began with a
little known Italian design genius named Massimo Osti
and a tiny part of his massive fashion legacy which
changed the apparel industry forever and still continues
to do so today. Which is partly why all those heads were so
bowed and so deeply furrowed, the question on
everyone’s lips was: Is America ready for a t-shirt this
good?

The fashion zealots in the skunk works thought so, which

is what had pushed them to it in the rst place. The only
thing now was for the decision makers to see the merit,
understand that this kind of simplicity is rare, and then to
take it on and make it “a thing.”

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Massimo Osti: The Genius Of

Garment Dye
Massimo Osti, the father of garment dyeing, was originally
a graphic designer born in Bologna in Italy who cut his
design teeth among the sharks in the big surf of the
Italian apparel trade. He is easily the most in uential
Italian designer you’ve never heard of, but there is no
question that his designs and fashion innovations have
touched everything you have ever worn. In his lifetime he
created a handful of exceptional fashion brands which still
sell like hot-cakes on eBay
(http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/massimo-osti), usually for
outrageous prices. When he nally decided to open his
rst store in 1991 he chose to do so in the iconic Flat Iron
building in New York where Broadway meets Fifth
Avenue. In the process he gave us the perfect model for
the concept store and ensured his beloved C.P. company
would go on to become fashion legend. From these crazy
heights it is hard to imagine this humble genius of Italian
design getting his start in fashion by, you guessed it,
designing prints for t-shirts.

Rewind to 1973 where Massimo Osti, by now an

established designer in his own right, is experimenting
with a quirky thing he calls “garment dyeing,” where a

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garment composed of different types of fabrics is dyed

only once it is nished, not in its various pieces–before it is
stitched together. He tries different kinds of fabrics in the
same dye bath together, over and over and over in one
determined effort to rid fabrics of their stiffness, their
“newness.” He wants everything to feel soft, worn-in like a
river stone, like a pair of old army trousers, indeed, he
wants clothes to feel pre-lived and pre-loved. In the early
1970s Massimo Osti was heading into a battle the
Victorian gentry had lost and conceded years before–
having their butlers wear their new clothes rst to break
them in and soften them up in an arcane human stone-
washing process to make their clothes might feel, lighter,
smoother and softer. Stiff garments wear the wearer, they
chafe, they rub, they irritate. Osti’s battle in 1973 was an
age old one, the difference here is that Osti won it for us,
coming up with the simplest solution: Dye the garment
after you have created it, dye it intensely and use the
dyeing process to temper it, to soften it up so that your
butler can get on with polishing the silver and you can get
on with wearing your clothes. This is the gift of garment
dyeing. This is the legacy of Massimo Osti. This is how you
make a world class t-shirt like Spectra’s even better, you
stand on the shoulders of a fashion genius and you dip in
into a river of dye, over and over again.

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The Dye Hard Dye Haus: Shot by Author

The Dye Hard Dye Haus

Stuck away in on the uncomfortable side of a baking hot,
pavement melting Californian day, somewhere in the
vicinity of Santa Ana is a dye house like no other. It looks
like the set for the nal big boss take-down from an
episode of The Green Hornet. This massive industrial
structure dwarfs everything around it and as you walk
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inside one can’t help but feel swallowed up, like Jonah
and the whale, into a great big blue belly of machinery,
chemistry lab smells and hue upon hue upon glorious
hue of every color imaginable. Garments patiently wait
their turn inside; piled up in barrows, they drip dry, they
are removed and replaced, they are stirred not shaken in
vats and enormous machines you can only think of as
worked by giants, they are ipped and they are opped.
This is where the dye-masters wrangle the rainbow and
turn it into t-shirts. This is Dye Hard Country, California.
The mise en scène of the place is the gritty temperature of
lm noir, it is a David Lynch remake of Die Hard waiting to
happen, it is pure street, it is raw California asphalt chic,
and it is perfect. In here there is no process too obscure,
no deep dip recipe uncharted, no palette unclaimed for
the incredible team that drive this shop many colors the
way a well drilled crew drives a battleship.

Spectra sent in a small batch of forty singles test

garments in to test the ef cacy of garment dyeing and,
within the week the dye house team had solved the
thorny problem of garment dyeing t-shirts in the style of
the great Massimo Osti–making them soft without
wearing them out, tempering and strengthening them so
that they wouldn’t shrink at home (most t-shirts will
experience around 5% shrinkage due to washing and
wearing over their lifespan), and nally–as the faces
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around the boardroom table would tell you–they revealed

a custom palette which could only be described as mouth
watering.

The Exceptional Results from Garment Dyeing

To Live And Dye For

Without hype, the sample garments returned from the
skunk-works are beautiful, and as the brows un-furrowed

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and Spectra re-jigged their production line and factory

facilities to incorporate this innovative and remarkable
garment dyed line of premium t-shirts a new direction
emerged: Dyeing became an integral part of the Spectra
design and production philosophy, whilst they quietly
launched their new line of garment dyed t-shirts,
appropriately named “The Massimo” in their online store
as a unisex item available in both male and female styles.
In turn, this opened the way for a river of dye processes,
from mineral washes to acid washes, crystal washes and
bombard washes, enzyme nishes to give a soft and
gentle nish to even the coarsest fabrics. Spectra’s
private label offerings simply exploded with variety and
potential.

Great pains were taken to ensure that the production

facilities could incorporate this dizzying array of variation
into SpectraTees’ renown Private Label production lines,
ensuring that Spectra would remain at the forefront of
Private label production and innovation, not only in the
state of California, but as one of the premier private label
production leaders in U.S.A.

This is no mean feat and one which is dif cult to maintain

given the cut-throat nature of the apparel business as well
as the numerous “big sh” already in the water, who
typically dominate the market with their high pricing and

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the discordant tune of their rigid and archaic production

philosophies. Spectra’s coup de grâce, in incorporating
this remarkable dye house into their production and
private label efforts, creates a new space for private label
clients to explore a vast array of nishes, designs and
washes to better arrive at their custom vision, perfected.
This is achieved through the design genius and
dedication of a committed and resourceful team, literally
champing at the bit for new design challenges to solve,
from color, to design, to fabrics through to re-engineering
the limits of production runs. With the on-boarding of the
awesome arsenal that is the dyeing facility the
SpectraTees t-shirt becomes an elevated item where
almost anything, and everything is now truly possible.

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