Gold and Jade Dragon Kimono Jacket 'Kinryu'

A dragon in gold and jade, coming out of smoke on a black jacket

Green is an unusual colour for a dragon jacket, and it is what makes this one. The beast itself is pale, white scales edged in gold, with a long horned head that comes out of the cloth high on the back, over the right shoulder. What surrounds it is the interesting part: smoke and cloud in jade green and moss, with rings of green light in the print like the glow off a lantern, and gold cloud shapes drawn in the old flat style along the sleeves and the hem.

The palette is what a dragon looks like glimpsed through incense. Nothing is outlined in white, nothing is neon. The gold is muted, the green is deep, the black is black, and the whole print reads as something antique and slightly lacquered, the way a good screen painting reads from across a room. The dragon's body winds down the back, across both sleeves and onto the front, so there is no side of this jacket without a piece of it.

It is printed rather than embroidered, all over, and the printing keeps the smoke soft and the scales sharp, which is the difficult combination. The cloth is polyester, light and stable, which keeps the greens from greying after a few washes. This is a warm-weather layer with the weight of a shirt, not a jacket you would wear against a wind.

The cut is a short open kimono jacket with a flat black edge down both fronts, no fastening, wide elbow-length sleeves and a hem at the hip. Worn open over a white tee, the white splits the print and the dragon's coils frame it on either side. Over black, the smoke seems to spread across the whole torso.

Keep everything else plain and dark. The jacket already has three colours and a mythical animal, and it wears them well because nothing else is asking for attention. It is the piece for an evening out where you would rather be remembered for one thing than for several.

One more thing about the colour. Jade green on black is the palette of old lacquer boxes and temple screens, and it ages well on a jacket for the same reason it ages well on furniture: it never looked new to begin with. Wear this for a few seasons and the print will look exactly as it was meant to, slightly smoky, slightly gilded, entirely itself.

Sizes run from M to 5XL. It is cut to Asian sizing and runs small, so take one size up from your usual. Between two sizes, take the larger.