Rain Haori

Traditional Haori in Waterproof Nylon

July 2009

OK, so it always rains at Pennsic. If you're doing generic European garb, you can throw a big cloak over everything and put on a big floppy hat, and still enjoy a day out. In the far East, they had these straw rain cape things, but those are diffifult to pack. I decided to make a piece of traditional Japanese clothing, but use modern outdoors fabric to hopefully keep me dry

A Haori is a traditional garment. It's not quite medieval, but there is a medieval garment that's quite similar, so it's close enough for its purpose. I figure using nylon outdoor fabric for the shell tosses any level of historicity out the window anyway, so why quibble over dates?

I used the Folkwear 129, "Japanese Hapi and Haori" pattern, because trying to figure out lined garments from scratch was more than I wanted to tackle. I learned some great stuff, but I think I'd have to do this pattern again before I could make up new patterns that were closer to medieval garb. I had some problems executing even this pattern, so maybe I'll give it another try before improvising.