Ink Tiger Summer Haori 'Hitofude'

Black ink dragged across white, in stripes that read as a tiger from the road

There is no tiger on this haori. There are its stripes. Thick black strokes sweep across white cloth, bending and doubling back on themselves, thinning to a line and swelling to a block, the way ink behaves when a wide brush is dragged fast across wet paper. From across a road it reads as an animal skin. From across a table it reads as calligraphy. The print goes edge to edge, sleeves, fronts and back, with no two strokes the same.

It is the most graphic piece in the range, two colours and nothing else, and it is the one to choose if a picture feels like too much and a plain jacket feels like too little. Black and white goes with everything and looks intentional in every light. It is the summer haori for people who already own a lot of black.

The name, Hitofude, means a single brushstroke, the calligrapher's word for a character drawn without lifting the brush, and the print looks like that: one long movement of ink, cut into a jacket.

It is printed, not painted, with the edges of the black kept slightly soft so the strokes look brushed rather than drawn. The cloth is polyester with a smooth surface and a dry hand, chosen because a white this white must stay white and a black this black must stay black through washing, and because a summer haori should weigh nothing. Three-quarter sleeves, open front with a flat band, no fastening, hem at the hip.

At three metres it is stripes. At thirty centimetres it is ink, with the dry edges and the pooled corners that a real brush leaves. The print has been drawn large on purpose so that both readings work, and the scale is what makes it look like cloth from a gallery rather than a zebra.

The cut is a short open haori, square at the shoulder and relaxed through the body. Over a white tee, the tee becomes one more white shape and the black strokes run round it. Over a black tee, the front reads as three black-and-white panels, which is sharper. It goes with black trousers, white trousers, denim of any wash, and plain shoes in black or white. Nothing patterned anywhere near it.

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.