To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the Japanese fashion pioneer SHIPS sought to declare its intentions for the future: “never forget our initial impulse and continue to challenge the limits of craftsmanship.” The “unquenchable passion for clothing” that unites the company’s 1,100 employees was depicted in the theme “CRAFTMAN, SHIPS: Forever blue, we sail on.”

To convey intensity of this passion, we eschewed digital processing for the tactile method of embroidery, carving the feelings directly into the fabric itself. As materials, we used repurposed thread and raw canvas scraps, the same durable material used for ship sails, sourced directly from the brand’s own warehouses.

The embroidery was not created by external artists, but the brand’s own tailors who support clothing production every day. Using 42.5 km of thread on some 500 pieces of canvas fabric, these artisans spent a monumental amount of time—600 hours—to create a stop-motion animation with embroidery applied by hand to each piece. By overlaying a 50-year voyage with the process of creating a single piece of clothing, we wove the story of how garments are delivered from makers to customers around the world.

In an age when AI can generate videos in minutes, we attested to SHIPS’ 50 years of sincerity by choosing the more arduous path.