Women's Indigo Floral Yukata 'Aiiro'

Blue roses and peonies packed across pale blue, in the colours of old indigo

Every flower on this yukata is blue. Roses and peonies in three shades, from a pale sky to a deep indigo, with dark leaves between them, packed edge to edge across a ground of the palest blue so that the whole garment reads as one colour with a hundred tones in it. The obi is brown, wide and crinkled, and against all that blue it is the one warm thing, the colour of a wooden floor.

It is the print in the women's range that looks most like the old indigo cloth of the Japanese countryside, where every pattern was some shade of blue because blue was the only dye that was cheap, and where the result was more beautiful than it had any right to be. This yukata has that.

The name, Aiiro, is indigo colour, the blue of the vat, the word for the whole family of shades on the cloth.

It is printed, not dyed in a vat, with the three blues kept distinct and the leaves kept dark. The cloth is polyester with a dry, matte hand, chosen because a pale blue must stay pale through washing and a deep one must not bleed into it, and because a yukata is for warm evenings and should hang light.

The obi is included, a wide brown sash with a crinkled texture that wraps twice and ties at the back. Cross the fronts left over right, tie the obi, and the yukata closes into a long blue column with the brown band across the middle.

At three metres it is a blue yukata. At thirty centimetres the flowers separate into roses and peonies, the three blues separate into their shades, and the leaves show their veins. It is a print that is calm from a distance and busy up close, which is the right way round.

The cut is long, falling to the ankle, with wide sleeves and a wrap front that adjusts at the waist. Tied, it is a summer outfit that reads traditional and does not look like a costume. Open over white, it is a robe in the best colour a robe can be.

It comes in one size, cut long with a generous wrap. It is Asian sizing and runs small, so it sits closer than a Western one-size; the wrap and the obi give the room, and set the waist where you want it.