Indigo Dragon Pattern Happi 'Koryu'

Small white dragons scattered across indigo, the happi that reads as a pattern

This is the happi coat that looks most like the ones handed out at a festival: indigo, covered edge to edge in a small repeating motif, and worn open over a white shirt by the people carrying the shrine. The motif here is a dragon, drawn small in white line with its coils and whiskers, scattered across the whole coat in every direction, so from a distance the coat reads as a textured blue and from close as a hundred dragons.

It is the calmest coat in the range and the most traditional in its manners, because a small all-over pattern on indigo is what Japanese festival cloth has looked like for two centuries, and it is the one that a person who has been to a matsuri will recognise first.

The name, Koryu, is the small dragon, the young one, drawn at the size of a hand and repeated until it is a pattern.

It is printed, not woven, with the white kept crisp against the indigo and the dragons placed so no two adjacent ones face the same way. The cloth is polyester, firmly woven with a dry, matte hand and a clean drape, chosen because a happi is a coat for standing in a crowd in July and must stay light, hold a flat collar band and keep its print through a summer of washing. It is unlined.

The cut is the classic happi: straight through the body, falling to mid-thigh, with wide three-quarter sleeves, a flat collar band and no fastening. It hangs open over a white tee and stays open, with a slit at each side.

From across a street it is an indigo coat with a pale fleck all over it. From close the fleck becomes dragons, each with claws, whiskers and a curl of cloud, drawn in a single white line.

Wear it over a white tee and white trousers, as in the photograph, which is exactly how it is worn at a festival, or over denim for the street. It is the coat to buy first if you want a happi and not a poster.

The collar band is flat and indigo, the same as the ground, so the pattern runs unbroken across the front. The coat is longer and straighter than a haori, the way a festival coat is, and it hangs open like one over a shirt.

Sizes run from S 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.