Tibetan Khenja with Linen Sleeves — Men’s Crane Brocade

Our brocade comes from small factory batches, so fresh designs and colours reach us through the year. Message us before ordering and we will show you the newest arrivals alongside everything on this page.

A Tibetan brocade jacket with sleeves is the older form of the Khenja — the version Tibetan, Bhutia, Tamang, Sherpa and Bhutanese men reach for when an occasion asks for more than everyday dress. It goes on complete, as a single garment, rather than as a vest layered over a separate shirt.

The body is woven in Japanese brocade of the kind used for kimono obi: a satin ground carrying its pattern in slightly raised weft, so the surface catches light at one angle and settles back into flat colour at another. Panels of pattern meet along hard diagonal seams, the way an obi is pieced, which is why no two areas of the jacket read quite the same. The sleeves are cut from cotton linen in undyed ivory — slubbed, breathable, matte where the brocade is lustrous, and cool enough to sit through a long afternoon indoors.

Men wear it over plain dark trousers, the brocade carrying the ceremonial register while the linen keeps the whole thing light on the shoulders. Families keeping these occasions alive far from the hills order it for exactly that reason. Made and finished in our Kalimpong workshop, in West Bengal.