Cream Floral Japanese Kimono 'Hanagoromo'

Plum-coloured flowers on cream stripes, with an orange note and a red obi

Underneath the flowers on this kimono there are stripes. Fine grey lines run down the cream ground, close-set, like the pinstripe of a man's yukata, and over them the flowers are printed in a single family of colour, plum, magenta and wine, chrysanthemums and plum blossom and small round crests, with a few blooms in orange to break the run. The obi is red, wide and flat, and it is deeper than any of the flowers.

It is the most old-fashioned print in the women's range in the best sense, because a stripe under a floral is a device from the kimono of a century ago, when cloth was woven striped and printed after, and the result has a depth that a plain ground never has.

The name, Hanagoromo, means flower robe, the old poetic word for the kimono a woman wore to see the cherry trees, and this is a flower robe with the stripe of a working one underneath.

It is printed, not woven, with the stripes and the flowers printed as one design so the lines run unbroken under the petals. The cloth is polyester with a dry, matte hand, chosen because a cream this pale must stay pale through washing and a plum this deep must not run, and because a kimono for warm days should hang light.

The obi is included, a wide red sash that wraps twice and ties at the back. Cross the fronts left over right, tie the obi, and the kimono closes into a long striped column with the flowers scattered down it and the red band across the middle.

At three metres it is a cream kimono with plum on it. At thirty centimetres the stripes appear under the flowers, the crests show their patterns, and the orange blooms separate from the plum ones. It is a print with two layers, and both are drawn.

The cut is long, falling to the ankle, with wide sleeves and a wrap front that adjusts at the waist. Tied, it is a dress for a spring afternoon that wants to look like it has a history. Open over white, it is a robe with a stripe and a garden on it.

It comes in one size, cut long with a generous wrap. It is Asian sizing and runs small, so it sits closer than a Western one-size; the wrap and the obi give the room, and set the waist where you want it.