Before it's fabric, it's silk soaked in the juice of the Dioscorea cirrhosa yam root and left in the sun. Dozens of times over. Then it's coated in mineral-rich river mud, where iron and plant tannin react to darken the surface into a deep, lustrous tone, distinct on each side: matte and rich on the face, a warm reddish-brown on the reverse.

The process is known as "three washes, nine boils, eighteen suns."

Nothing about it is fast, and nothing about it is exact. No two lengths dye quite the same.

The result is a silk with real body: crisp where ordinary silk is soft, warm to the touch even as it looks cool, and increasingly lustrous the more it's worn. It has been made this way for centuries, and it is still made this way now.