Navy Noragi Style Jacket 'Shokunin'

The blue of Japanese workers, edged in cream, cut like a noragi and worn open

Indigo was never a fashion colour in Japan. It was the colour of work, the dye in the coats of farmers and carpenters because it was cheap, tough and hid the day. This jacket borrows that blue and the shape that went with it: the noragi, the short field jacket with a flat front and wide sleeves that could be pushed up. The cloth is a deep marine navy with a dry, slubbed weave. Cream draws the edges, down both fronts and inside each cuff where the sleeve turns back. One blue knot button sits at the chest.

It is the most workwear-looking piece in the edged family and the one that reads most Japanese from a distance, because the proportions are the old ones: square shoulder, short body, sleeves that stop before the wrist so they stay out of the way.

The name, Shokunin, is the Japanese word for a craftsman, the person who does one thing for forty years and gets it right, and it is the right name for a jacket built on the coat those people wore.

The cloth is a polyester weave with a matte, textured hand, chosen because a working blue must stay even through washing and because a jacket for warm months should be a layer, not a weight. It softens with wear and does not shine.

The cut is a short open kimono-pattern jacket with a hem at the hip. Knotted over a white tee, the cream edging and the white tee line up into a pale stripe through the blue. Open over grey, it goes softer. It goes with denim, which is the obvious pairing and still the best, with chinos, with white trousers in summer, and with boots or plain trainers.

If you want a jacket that looks like it has a job, this is the one. It will do that job for years and look better at the end of them.

The knot button is blue, matched to the body, so that when the front is fastened the cream line runs unbroken from collar to hem. At thirty centimetres the weave shows its slub, a little uneven, a little like hand-loomed cloth. At three metres it is a plain navy jacket with a pale edge, and that is enough to be recognised by.

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.