Chrysalis · Lisa Ho Early 2000s Cream Wrap Duster Coat

Cotton-nylon blend with a permanent crinkle finish and a soft self-stripe sheen · shawl collar, wrap front with two swirled resin buttons, self-tie belt · Lisa Ho · early 2000s · labelled AUS 10, US 6, EUR 36, length 115cm flat · exhibition condition, no flaws

The buttons are the first thing worth looking at, two wide swirled resin discs the colour of something left out in weather, cream shading into amber at the centre the way old bone does. Everything else on this coat is quiet by comparison, which is clearly the point.

Long before this coat, the wrap belonged to robes and kimonos, to garments closed by the body rather than by hardware, and every wrap coat since has been quietly borrowing that logic. This one wears it lightly: two buttons standing in for what could have been six, a self-tie belt doing most of the actual work, a shape descended from dressing gowns pretending to be outerwear. Lisa Ho is a name better known for colour, beading and spectacle, which makes the restraint here almost an argument in itself, proof that the same hand could do quiet as convincingly as it did loud. That range, more than the label, is what makes a piece worth archiving.

The collar is cut wide and soft enough to wear standing up around the throat or folded back into a shawl, and the coat wraps rather than buttons straight, closing at an angle across the body with those two swirled resin buttons doing the work. A self-fabric belt ties at the waist, and the hip pockets are set on the diagonal rather than straight, angled into the wrap the same way the front closure is. The cloth itself carries a permanent crinkle from the nylon-cotton blend it is woven from, with a faint self-stripe running through it that catches a soft, almost metallic sheen in direct light. The lining is acetate throughout, and her own care label, unusually, signs off with an exclamation mark: dry clean only, warm iron, enjoy.