One of several gorgeous antique Japanese wall hangings at Sri.

BUAISOU Brooklyn Studio

117 Grattan St, Brooklyn

A DIY dye house for creating your own indigo wonders.

The charming American outpost of a Tokushima, Japan-based indigo farm, BUAISOU is one of the only places in the world you can hand-dye your own (white) clothes using natural indigo. Indigo stuff is everywhere these days, but most of it is dyed with cheap and plentiful synthetic pigment. To achieve the true depth of indigo you have to go natural, and at BUAISOU you can make an appointment to dip-dye your white tees, shirts, sneaks, and even worn out jeans—the natural stuff, it turns out, doesn’t bleed like your industrial-dyed jeans. Where once every Japanese village had an indigo vat, BUAISOU, founded in 2012 by Kenta Watanabe and Kakuo Kaji, is one of only a handful of indigo farms left in Japan that grows indigo and turns it into sukumo, the inky byproduct of a process in which indigo leaves are broken down in a vat into soluble dye. The studio's vat is where the dip-dye magic occurs, though as it relies on a living fermentation process it can be a bit temperamental. When the vat is dyeing an appropriate shade, BUAISOU Brooklyn churns out sublimely blue bandanas, tees, and even mugs you can buy if you don’t have any white tees to bring yourself.