Japanese Pattern Kimono 'Kobana'

Small flowers in a grey lattice on charcoal, like an old bolt of cloth

This is the kimono that looks like it came off an old bolt. A small pattern covers the whole cloth: flowers and round medallions set inside a fine diamond lattice, drawn in grey on charcoal, so dense and so even that from across a room it reads as a texture and only up close as a design. The obi is brown, wide and flat, a warm note against a cool ground.

It is the most traditional-looking piece in the men's range, because a small all-over pattern, komon, is what Japanese men wore for everyday for three hundred years: never a picture, never a stripe you could see from the street, just a fine, dark, busy surface that meant the wearer had taste and did not need to prove it.

The name, Kobana, means small flowers, which is what the pattern is made of, and it is the humblest name in the collection for one of the most refined pieces in it.

It is printed, not woven, with the lattice kept fine and the flowers kept legible at a scale where they could easily blur. The cloth is polyester with a dry hand and a slight texture, chosen because grey on charcoal must stay distinct through washing, and because a kimono for the warm months should hang light.

The obi is included. Cross the fronts left over right, wrap the brown obi twice at the waist and knot it at the hip. Brown on charcoal is a quiet pairing, and it is the one the old cloth merchants would have chosen.

At three metres it is a dark grey robe with a faint texture. At thirty centimetres the texture becomes flowers, each one drawn, each one inside its diamond, and the lattice runs unbroken across the seams. It is a print that rewards standing close, and it was designed to.

The cut is long, falling to the ankle, with wide square sleeves and the room to move. Worn at home it is a robe with a pattern you discover over weeks. Worn out with dark sandals it is an evening outfit that reads plain from the street and considered from the table, and it goes with black, brown, grey and cream.

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