Tone story · Saebom 새봄 · № 01
Underwing
the pale pink a butterfly keeps beneath its wings
Campaign · the butterfly, up closeSome colors are found, not made. This one was found in a glasshouse in early spring, on the first warm morning of the year. A butterfly came down out of the light and landed on the rail beside us, and as it folded its wings the bright side disappeared. What it kept was underneath: a pale, powdery pink, quieter than anything it shows in flight. Butterflies wear their loudest colors for the world and their softest ones for themselves. This was the soft one.
We photographed it before it lifted off and started hunting. Not for a pink, because pinks are everywhere: every mall carries a hundred of them, bright and eager and somehow all alike. We were hunting for this exact quietness, the pink of a wing at rest. That took vendor calls, swatch books, and fabric samples by the boxful, a thousand near-misses that were always too candy, too cold, or too new-looking.
“A butterfly had it the whole time, folded beneath its wings, shown only in the glimpse of a moment.”
Matching it in cotton
Four months in, a garment-dye run came back from the mill and we stopped arguing. Garment dyeing colors the piece after it is sewn, so the tone settles into every seam and fold the way pigment settles into a wing: unevenly, warmly, never twice the same. That variance is not a flaw. It is the entire point. Your Underwing will not be identical to anyone else's, and no two butterflies are either.
We dyed one lot. Four hundred pieces, counted, numbered, and relabeled by hand. When the lot runs out we will not chase the recipe, because a found color is a moment, and moments do not restock. It will move to the archive, and something new will be waiting on another wing somewhere.
Worn here
Cropped Crew Sweatshirt
in Underwing
ViewWhy “Underwing”
Nabi means butterfly, and this is our first tone, so it had to come from the butterfly itself. The underwing is the side you only see when it lands: the quiet side, the one it keeps for itself. We never keep manufacturer names, because a color this specific deserves better than a word you could find on any rack. When you wear Underwing, you are wearing the side the butterfly rarely shows.
