I want to live my hot girl summer like I’m stephen maturin in the galapagos- just a straw hat, a sexy embroidered robe, some lizards, and vibes
his robe is actually printed not embroidered! historically, fabric like this would have been hand-printed with a series of complex, interlocking carved wooden blocks like this:
this is actually better than embroidered given the goal of costuming as 'communicating a lot of info about a character without exposition'. Banyan robes like this would have been worn as fashionable 'undress' at home by gentlemen - so not really appropriate to be traipsing around doing naturalist things. But, from this production's standpoint it is serving to show Maturin as softer, more 'natural' and more casual in contrast to the more stiff/traditional naval characters.
by the early 19th c. embroidery was already largely relegated to formal wear for men, until it basically disappeared from menswear almost entirely later in the century (aside from occasional exceptions like livery or a subtle design on a waistcoat or an emblem or something).
Cottons printed in India - like chintz and calico (both words derive from Hindi) - and later, fabrics printed in Europe which basically copied Indian design & aesthetics wholesale, were very popular for more informal clothing in the west starting in the later part of the 18th century. Here's a dress with a quite similar pattern from a similar period:
The wiki lists banyans as being inspired by kimono, but considering the relatively limited exposure the west had to Japanese material goods prior to the mid 19th c. and the fact that 'banyan' has sanskrit origins, I think it's far more likely that the style of garment was inspired by the many open-robe style overgarments worn throughout the near east and through southeast Asia.
Many banyans were imported garments with minimal modification, (or even could be made directly for export to the European market - a similar thing happened in the late 19th century with Western women snapping up and wearing kimono as dishabille at the height of late 19th c. Japonisme)
There are also a lot of chintzes that were hand painted, rather than printed! Like this 18th century fragment in the Smithsonian.
