About Us

Bristol-based designer, Claire Muskett, set up her company, Ukiyo-Go, to introduce the Haramaki to a European audience. As someone who suffers from poor circulation and therefore always feels the cold, she spent many winters with a scarf wrapped around her waist to keep her warm. One day, her natural interest in Japanese history delivered her a chance solution - the Haramaki, which she found in a book about Samurai. She immediately set about trying to find herself a modern day version and her research revealed that, while they did exist, they were very difficult to get hold off outside Japan and so she decided to start making her own. Claire's handmade haramaki remain true to their origins but have been injected with a new life to make them both useful and desirable to a broader audience. So far, this includes Holistic Practitioners and their patients, people working outdoors, students of yoga and the martial arts, cyclists and pregnant women. Claire's grounding in art and natural instinct for design have also led to her haramaki being a quirky must-have fashion item.