Green and Yellow Ikat Kaftan

Vivid green and yellow outlined in black — three dye rounds, and the black last, since a dark colour can be dyed over lighter ones but never the other way round. The order of the baths is the whole craft of ikat, and it is visible here in the way the black holds its edge while the green and yellow blur into one another.

Product details

• Garment: a long open kaftan
• Cloth: handwoven adras — silk warp over cotton weft
• Size: one size, cut generously and worn open — custom lengths and sleeve lengths on request
• Main colours: green, yellow, black
• Motif: broad figures in green and yellow with black outlines
• Open front, no fastening
• Care: dry-clean, or hand wash cool without wringing.
• Cloth handwoven in Margilan; garment cut and sewn in Tashkent

How to wear it

Worn open over a plain base — a shift, a shirt and jeans, anything unpatterned. It descends from the chapan, the long coat Uzbeks have worn open over everything else for centuries, cut lighter here and unlined. Nothing else in the outfit needs to do any work. See the robes and chapans, or the cloth itself as ikat fabric by the metre.

How this ikat is made

The pattern is not printed on the cloth and it is not embroidered into it. Every thread of the warp is tied off in bundles and dyed, one colour at a time, before a single row is woven — a process called abrbandi, cloud-binding, for the soft feathered edge it leaves on every motif. The cloth is handwoven in Margilan in the Fergana Valley. The garment is then cut and sewn in our atelier in Tashkent.

Made to order in our Tashkent atelier and dispatched within 18–25 days, by Uzbekiston Pochtasi tracked airmail. One size, cut generously and worn open. For a different length or sleeve, send your measurements through the contact page and the piece is cut to them at no extra cost.