Tokyo Oxygen

I have a new coat for winter. A new, unique, hand made for me coat.



I feel so incredibly blessed because my mum gave me an IOU for my 40th birthday (last year), and she is an amazing artist, designer and artisan of exacting standards.



We decided to hunt for fabric on our Japan trip in June last year. It was early summer, and the first few fabric shops we tried had few or no winter fabrics in stock. Finally we hit the jackpot on one of the last days in Tokyo, when we went to Nippori Fabric Town, a neighbourhood specialising in fabric and haberdashery. So many fabric shops.



Even there we really only found the right kind of wool in one place. Luckily it was this fabulous charcoal, and a small amount of the black and white textured wool for contrast. In another shop we found a lovely piece of green leather.



Mum used up almost every scrap of that leather with the piping around the collar and down the fronts, edging the sleeves, and along the shaped seams on the back flowing around the pockets; and all the other greenery she added. (Above, you can see the piping around the pocket, and the fancy pocket lining which shows just in little flashes as I wear it).



The lining fabric Mum found in Melbourne and it is perfect. She always likes to use interesting prints instead of plain linings. This stuff is 'shot' so that from one angle it looks green (sadly, I did not capture this in a photo) and the other purple.

The coat was based on a pattern Mum had used before for her own winter coat, but she drafted the assymmetrical collar from scratch with some suggestions from me, and taking inspiration from a different asymmetrical coat I had seen in a catalogue.





One of the first things that struck us about Tokyo was the amount of greenery everywhere, as well as the incredible tidiness in such a big city. Mum took that idea as her inspiration and hence the name, Tokyo Oxygen. The green 'fingers' have a double meaning for us, representing the green growth and parks we loved in Tokyo, and also a stylised city skyline.


Here are two great details. There are two subtle zippered pockets inside the lining, perfect for a passport or bus pass. And the gorgeous buttons came from a collection my aunt bought in Nantes, France, as a souvenir for Mum. I really liked them so much better than anything else we could find, but they were a little too small. I hit the jackpot at the Camelot stall at the Old Bus Depot Markets, finding some slightly bigger plain ones in the same dark silver colour, which fit exactly behind the smaller gold and silver ones. I love mixed metals.



It is so warm, and completely unique and I am absolutely loving wearing it.

Oh and I happen to have almost matching green boots - hand-me-downs from little sister many years ago.