Tortoiseshell Trim Japanese Pyjamas 'Kikko'

Light grey crinkle gauze with a hexagon-pattern trim at the collar, cuffs and pocket

The trim on this jinbei set is where the design lives. The collar band, the cuffs and the patch pocket are cut from a different cloth, a small hexagonal pattern in grey and white, the tortoiseshell lattice that Japanese textiles have used for a thousand years, and everything else, the body of the top and the trousers, is a plain light grey crinkled cotton gauze. The contrast is quiet, grey on grey, but it draws the outline of the garment and gives the eye three places to land.

It is the traditional way to decorate a jinbei, and the most practical: the trim is where a garment wears first, and a second cloth there began as a repair. Here it is a design, and a good one.

The name, Kikko, is the tortoiseshell, the hexagon pattern itself, a symbol of long life since the tortoise was supposed to live ten thousand years. It is on the collar, where you will see it in the mirror.

The pattern is woven into the trim cloth, not printed on the gauze. The gauze is cotton, crinkled in the finish rather than by ironing, so it never needs pressing and goes back to its texture after every wash. It is light, it breathes, and it dries fast.

Wear the top crossed left over right and knot the tie at the hip; the trousers sit at the waist on a soft band. At home it is the set with a little more to it than the plain ones. Out, with sandals, it is a summer outfit that reads considered from the street, because the trim reads as tailoring.

Up close the hexagons show every line, and the crinkle of the body shows its pucker against the flat trim. From across a garden it is a light grey two-piece with a darker edge at the collar and the cuffs.

It goes with grey, white, black and bare feet. If the plain sets are the garment and the embroidered sets are the souvenir, this one is the garment with a pattern where a pattern belongs.

The trousers are plain, cut loose with a soft band at the waist, so all the pattern on the set is on the top and all of it is above the waist, where it is seen. Wash cold, hang, wear.

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