Ukiyo-e Pop Art Shirt 'Irodori'

Woodblock faces cut into pop colour blocks, on a camp shirt with no quiet side

Take an old woodblock print, cut it into pieces, and scatter the pieces across a shirt in the colours of a 1980s arcade. That is this camp shirt. Faces from ukiyo-e portraits, a courtesan, an actor, appear in fragments between blocks of turquoise, orange, hot pink, purple and green, with arrows, zigzags and lattice patterns filling the gaps, and the print runs edge to edge over the whole shirt, collar included.

It is the loudest shirt in the collection and the one with the most history in it, because the eighties in Tokyo did exactly this to their own heritage and called it new.

The name, Irodori, means colouring, the adding of colour to a thing, and the shirt has had it added generously.

The cut is a camp shirt: an open collar that lies flat, a straight hem to wear untucked, short sleeves cut wide, and a body cut boxy through the chest so it hangs rather than clings. It is the shape of the Japanese summer shirt since the fifties, and it has not needed changing. The cloth is a polyester-cotton blend with a smooth, dry hand, chosen because an all-over print needs a flat ground to stay sharp and a summer shirt needs to wash cold, dry fast and come out of the machine without an iron. It does.

Wear it open over a white tee or buttoned to the second button with white trousers, as in the photograph, and plain shoes. Nothing else with a pattern; the shirt has used the day's allowance.

From across a street it is colour in blocks. From close the faces appear between the blocks, each one a fragment of a print two hundred years old, and the patterns in the gaps are the patterns from the kimono in those prints. It is a shirt that rewards being looked at, and it will be.

The print is placed so the largest face lands on the back, between the shoulders, and the front carries the colour blocks, which is the right way round: the face is for the room, the colour is for the mirror.

It washes cold, inside out, and dries on a hanger in an hour; the print does not fade, and there is nothing to iron unless you want the collar sharp, in which case a cool iron on the back of it takes a minute.

It comes in one size, cut boxy with an easy fit through the body. It is Asian sizing, so it sits closer than a Western one-size; if you are usually L or above, expect it to fit close rather than loose.