Copperplate · Mariko and Swan 1990s Baroque Engraving Print Rayon Shirt

Mariko and Swan, Australia · soft brushed black rayon · baroque engraving print in blush and rose · pointed collar · breast pocket · buttoned barrel cuffs · tagged a vintage 12, modern AU 10–12 · 1990s · L 71cm flat · very good condition · dry clean or careful cold hand-wash

The print looks lifted from an engraver's folio: rosettes, acanthus scrolls and cabbage roses rendered in fine crosshatched lines, each motif floating on black like a plate torn from a baroque pattern book and scattered across the cloth in blush and dusty rose. A pointed collar, a breast pocket cut so the pattern keeps drifting across it, small black buttons down the placket and again at the barrel cuffs of the long sleeves.

She is a 1990s shirt to her bones. The label reads Mariko and Swan, in the hand-drawn lettering small Australian houses favoured, with the centimetre-based size tag of the era sewn beneath. The label has all but vanished from the record, which is its own kind of provenance. Australia in that decade was full of these small labels, cutting good rayon in city workrooms, selling through boutiques, keeping no archive. Their surviving pieces are the only documentation they left, and they are almost never seen twice. The decade loved this trick too, raiding the archive of European ornament and printing it oversized on fluid black cloth, equal parts library and nightclub. The cloth is rayon, soft and faintly brushed, with a fuzz you feel more than see. Rayon takes a print like this with more depth than silk would, drapes close, and softens further with every wear.