Matcha Sonho: The Dream Behind the Green
The Names Behind the Bikinis
From centuries-old Japanese tea ritual to Pilates mornings and modern wellness culture — the story behind one of my favourite Yaropa sets.
Every Yaropa piece carries a name with a story behind it.
Not as an afterthought or simply a label, but as part of the world we build around each design. A name can hold a place, a feeling, a memory, a woman or sometimes, an entire way of looking at life.
So I wanted to start telling the stories behind them.
Because I don’t think a name should just sound beautiful. I think it should mean something.
Matcha Sonho began with a colour but somewhere along the way, it became a state of mind.
Matcha Sonho is one of my favourite sets in the Yaropa collection, and if I’m honest, that’s not only because of its colour.
That soft matcha-latte green is the first thing you notice. But what keeps me coming back to it is the feeling of the fabric against the skin and the way the cut flatters every curve.
Still, the name came before any of that.
And the more I learned about where matcha actually comes from, the more it felt like the only name this set could have.
Before Matcha Became a Trend
Matcha’s story began long before green lattes, wellness cafés and Instagram.
The practice of grinding tea leaves into powder developed in China centuries ago, particularly during the Song dynasty. Tea traditions later travelled to Japan, where powdered tea became deeply embedded in Japanese culture.
Over centuries, matcha became associated with chanoyu – the Japanese Way of Tea – and with principles influenced by Zen Buddhism: attention, simplicity, respect and presence.
The preparation itself became part of the meaning.
Measure.
Sift.
Add water.
Whisk.
Drink.
An ordinary action made deliberate.
Long before we talked about mindfulness as a wellness concept, there was already something powerful in the idea of giving your complete attention to something as simple as preparing tea.
Not because it makes you more productive afterwards.
Simply because, for those few minutes, that’s the only thing you’re doing.
What’s Actually in the Cup?
There is also a reason matcha feels different from an ordinary cup of green tea.
With brewed green tea, the leaves are infused in water and then removed. With matcha, finely powdered tea leaves are whisked into water and consumed, meaning you ingest the leaf itself.
Matcha naturally contains catechins including EGCG alongside caffeine and the amino acid L-theanine.
These compounds have attracted scientific interest, particularly around attention and cognition. Research on caffeine and L-theanine suggests that the combination can have beneficial effects on some measures of attention, while a small 2017 human study specifically investigating matcha found modest improvements in certain attention and memory tasks after consumption.
The science is more nuanced than some of the wellness claims surrounding matcha would have us believe.
And perhaps that’s worth saying.
Matcha doesn’t need to be a miracle drink to be meaningful.
Sometimes a ritual can simply be a ritual.
How Matcha Became a Whole Lifestyle
And then something interesting happened.
A centuries-old tea became an unmistakable symbol of contemporary wellness.
Matcha cafés appeared across cities far beyond Japan. The colour photographed beautifully. Social media embraced it. And somewhere between the reformer studio and the morning coffee run, matcha found itself at the centre of an entire lifestyle.
You know the image.
A matcha latte.
Pilates.
A matching set.
A slower morning.
Maybe a walk before opening your laptop.
What was once niche became aesthetic, and what became aesthetic became enormous business. The global matcha market is now projected by industry analysts to reach around $7.4 billion by 2030.
And yes — I’ll say it. I’m a matcha girl myself. Most mornings start with one.
I’m not immune to the trend, and I don’t want to pretend I am. But I also don’t think what’s happening is only about a pretty green drink.
The Dream Behind the Aesthetic
For a lot of women, I think matcha has come to represent something bigger.
A slower kind of aspiration.
For years, the version of success we were sold seemed to be built around speed.
More output.
More plans.
More work.
More visibility.
More everything, all at once.
Now there seems to be another dream quietly sitting beside it.
To feel well.
To have time.
To move your body because it feels good.
To eat well without turning it into punishment.
To build a beautiful life without constantly needing to prove that you’re busy living it.
Of course, ordering a matcha doesn’t magically give you that life.
And a Pilates class doesn’t solve the pressure women feel to do everything perfectly.
Sometimes wellness culture creates its own kind of pressure.
But underneath the aesthetic, I think there’s something genuine.
A desire for balance.
The five minutes it takes to prepare a matcha.
The hour you protect for movement.
The decision not to answer everything immediately.
Small rituals that say:
Not everything has to happen at full speed.
Matcha didn’t invent that dream.
It simply became one of the ways many of us learned to picture it.
What Does Sonho Mean?
And this is where the second half of the name matters.
Sonho means “dream” in Portuguese.
Matcha Sonho.
A matcha dream.
But for me, sonho isn’t about escaping reality.
It’s about imagining how you actually want your reality to feel.
Calmer.
Healthier.
More intentional.
More present.
Maybe a little softer.
The kind of life where ambition and wellbeing don’t constantly have to compete with each other.
What Matcha Sonho Means to Yaropa
The version of matcha we’re drinking today has a history stretching back centuries.
It didn’t need Instagram to mean something.
Long before it became a lifestyle marker, preparing and drinking powdered tea had become part of a practice built around attention, ritual and presence.
And that’s the part I want Matcha Sonho to hold onto.
Yaropa isn’t about chasing whatever aesthetic happens to be trending this season.
It’s about creating pieces you want to return to.
Pieces that feel good against your body.
Pieces that move with you.
Pieces that belong as naturally to a slow morning as they do to wherever the rest of your day takes you.
Maybe that’s the connection between the two words.
Matcha is the ritual. Sonho is the dream.
And somewhere between them is the life so many of us are trying to create:
Present, but ambitious.
Soft, but strong.
Intentional, but never rigid.
A life that isn’t only lived at full speed.
Trends will move on. But the desire behind Matcha Sonho feels much older than any trend and much more enduring.
Presence over noise. Quality over speed. Something worth returning to.
More names, more stories, soon.
∼ Yara
Founder of Yaropa
Sources & Further Reading
This story draws on research into matcha’s history and composition, its relationship with Japanese tea culture, and scientific research into its potential effects on attention and wellbeing.
- Kochman, J. et al. (2020). Health Benefits and Chemical Composition of Matcha Green Tea: A Review. Molecules, 26(1), 85.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7796401/ - Jakubczyk, K. et al. (2020). Antioxidant Properties and Nutritional Composition of Matcha Green Tea. Foods, 9(4), 483.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7231151/ - Dietz, C., Dekker, M. & Piqueras-Fiszman, B. (2017). An Intervention Study on the Effect of Matcha Tea, in Drink and Snack Bar Formats, on Mood and Cognitive Performance. Food Research International, 99, 72–83.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28784536/ - Kochman, J. et al. (2020). Health Benefits and Chemical Composition of Matcha Green Tea: A Review — PubMed. Further scientific reference on matcha’s catechins, EGCG, caffeine, L-theanine and traditional cultivation.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33375458/ - Jakubczyk, K. et al. (2020). Antioxidant Properties and Nutritional Composition of Matcha Green Tea — PubMed.Further reference on matcha’s polyphenol content and antioxidant properties.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32290537/