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‘From farm/fieldwork to fabric,’ the Sabotage X Gentle Artefacts capsule collection is the output of a highly unique collaboration, in which a fashion designer and street photographer accompanied Gentle Artefacts to conduct ethnographic fieldwork with craft-scale tea farmers in Wazuka, Kyoto, Japan.
The front of this piece features a signature logo of the collection—a skeleton hand holding a tender spring tea bud, as the new leaf shoots would appear before being harvested for sencha—which designer Mark Ong (Mr. Sabotage) devised while on site at Obubu Farms’s sencha processing facility, bringing an element of the streetwear designer’s playfully macabre sensibility to this tea inspired piece.
The back of the garment reads ‘Sencha Maniac,’ a tag which emerged through interviews with Akky, the master tea farmer at Obubu, who self describes as a tea maniac (sencha, yes, but “all forms of old style teas,” by which he means, traditionally cultivated and processed types).
The images for the editorial, shot by Takeshi Hayakawa and featuring models from Kyoto and Osaka, was captured on site at Obubu Tea Farms during the spring harvest (May 11th to 13th, 2025). The final two editorial images (above) are of Hiro-san, the GM of Obubu Farms modeling the collection he helped to inspire.
The gallery to the left, however, contains naturalistic photos—also captured by Takeshi—depicting Gentle Artefacts’s Gabriel and Sabrina and Obubu Farm’s Matsu-san and Akky-san harvesting sencha and tencha (precursor to matcha) together. Akky-san (pictured here in his harvesting hat) overseas all of Obubu’s tea cultivation and production, and his approach to tea farming as a way of life coupled with his descriptions of the everyday practices his vocation entails, are what inspired Sabotage’s designs for this collection. Matsu-san (pictured here in a checkered shirt), whose mission is to “bring Japan tea to the world,” is pictured on a rare day of introspective hand-picking, pursued for his own pleasure. The final image portrays Akky from behind, late at night, processing the tea leaves he’d harvested that morning into sencha. Every waking minute of his day is devoted to the crafting of tea—although tea craft undoubtedly enters his dreams as well…
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· 100% cotton (slub jersey 300 GSM) in charcoal.
· Ribbed crew neck and cuffs.
· Direct to garment dye photo print.
· Contrastive white top stitching at cuffs, collar, and shoulder.
· Machine wash cold or cool. Turn inside out to wash. Hand wash recommended to sustain integrity of the photo print.
· Do not tumble dry. Lay flat to dry. Cool iron.
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Slight oversized, but fits true to size. Take your usual size. If between sizes, consider taking one size down.
