Treatments
Selected Wild Donkey garments are enhanced through specialised hand treatments designed to create depth, texture, and individuality. From vintage-inspired washes and pigment fading to dyeing techniques that soften and naturally age the fabric, each process gives the product a unique lived-in character. These treatments reflect the brand's commitment to craftsmanship and authenticity, creating garments that feel genuine from the very first wear.
Wash
Texture and softness built in through washing.
This mild wash recreates the look of well-worn garments, with subtle fading and softened fibres.
A high-intensity wash designed to create visibly washed-out tones, amplifying fading and wear. The process produces noticeable variations across each garment, with colour dropping out fastest at the seams and stitching lines. This uniqueness is intentional, reflecting the lived-in quality and vintage-inspired aesthetic of the brand.
This natural abrasion process uses pumice stones to create a soft, worn-in texture with subtle vintage surface marks. As the stones fall against the fabric, they generate unique variations across each garment, producing gentle fading and surface irregularities. It can be done at different intensities.
Achieved by tumbling garments against chemically treated stones, our marble wash produces garments that have a dappled, cloud-like effect.
Created by folding the garment during the wash process, this technique produces a soft, vintage look with intentionally placed faded lines that mimic the effects of long-term storage or wear. The finished result feels relaxed and naturally aged.
Shop products with this treatment:
Dye
Colour worked into the fabric itself, rather than sitting on the surface.
Colour is sprayed onto the garment by hand, building a gradual transition from the darkest tone through to the lightest. It's done by eye, piece by piece, so no two garments land on quite the same gradient.
A manual dye process achieved with coffee, producing natural, earthy tones with artisanal charm.
Indigo dye is a traditional process that gives garments a rich, deep blue tone with beautiful fading over time. Subtle variations in shade, especially along seams and folds, are expected and add to the garment's authenticity.
This fully manual process creates bold, unique patterns with high contrast and tonal swirls. Each garment is folded and dyed by hand, making everything one-of-a-kind.
A controlled bleach treatment lightens the base fabric unevenly to create a sun-faded, vintage look rather than a flat, uniform one. The effect is bold, with high contrast areas and a lived-in appearance.
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Sun Fade
Not a wash, and not a dyeing process, sun fade is a separate finishing step. A targeted acid spray technique is applied to create localised fading on key areas of the garment, such as pressure points, seams, edges, and raised surfaces. This is then paired with a strong wash to enhance the worn-in effect, resulting in subtle tonal shifts and delicate abrasions.
Shop products with this treatment:
Graphic and pattern applied to the surface of the garment, rather than into it.
Screen printing creates sharp, bold graphics with solid coverage and strong colour intensity.
Lino printing produces artisanal, textured graphics with a hand-crafted, block-print feel. Hand-applied, so expect ink coverage and placement variation.
Dévoré printing burns away cotton fibres from blended fabrics, leaving behind sheer, semi-transparent patterns with a delicate contrast.
Wet printing is applied to dampened fabric, producing a soft, blurred, watercolour-style result.
Flock printing bonds fine fibres to the base fabric, creating a soft, plush, velour-like finish.
Other Surface Applications
Similarly to print, these hand-processes add surface detail rather than change the base fabric.
From selecting the perfect design to the final stitch, our embroidery process combines careful craftsmanship with attention to detail.
Using a series of interlocking loops, chain stitch embroidery creates a distinctive textured finish, adding depth, character, and an artisanal feel.
Distressing creates a worn, vintage look by manually adding subtle abrasions, frays, or surface damage at key points. This effect gives garments a genuinely lived-in persona.
Our coffee spray technique uses fine coffee droplets to intentionally stain and weather garment surfaces, embracing irregularities for an organic, handcrafted finish.
Treatments
There's no fixed order to any of this. The sequence and combination of treatments can change the final result depending on what's used when, and whose hands are behind it. This is where real Wild Donkey skill and craftsmanship come into play – knowing what to apply, when to apply it, and when to leave it alone. It's what gives every piece its genuine vintage feel.
Made in Italy.
Made by hand.
Every Wild Donkey piece starts as a blank from a supplier we've worked with in Turin, comes together at our own factory, and finishes in the hands of a small group of specialist craftsmen, each chosen for one skill rather than all of them: embroidery, washing, finishing. Different workshops, different corners of the country, one standard the whole way through.