Some of the most expensive blue in history started as a rock. Lapis lazuli, deep blue and flecked with metallic-yellow pyrite, came out of the mountains of northeast Afghanistan and traveled to European workshops to be crushed, washed and sifted into a powder called ultramarine.
Painters priced it like gold. Then they spent it on one garment above all others: the cloak around the Virgin Mary's shoulders.
We feel that pull every time we sit down to draw. When a design needs depth, blue is the color we reach for: a wolf in cobalt and ice, angelic script in indigo, frost-fine geometry on a sky-blue ground. The Renaissance kept this color for the Queen of Heaven. Yours comes with pockets.
What does a blue cloak mean in paintings?
In European religious painting, a blue cloak often marks the Virgin Mary. Ultramarine, ground from Afghan lapis lazuli, was at times valued as highly as gold, so artists saved their finest blue for her robes, possibly as an act of devotion. Magus Fawn's blue cloaks borrow that same deep glow for festival nights and winter streets.
The pigment's name maps its route. Ultramarine comes from the Latin for "beyond the sea," because Italian traders brought it in from Afghan mines during the 14th and 15th centuries, according to Wikipedia's ultramarine entry. The long grinding, sifting and washing that turned stone into powder drove that price, and the robes of Mary and the Christ child got the best of it. Painters sometimes saved even more by laying a cheaper blue, azurite, underneath.
You can still stand in front of the result. In Sassoferrato's The Virgin in Prayer (1640–50), light pours onto her blue drapery, and the National Gallery in London notes that the blue is ultramarine, the most expensive of the blue pigments. A whole painting built to make one cloak shine. We relate.
Our favorite footnote: lapis lazuli has been mined at Sar-i Sang, in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, for more than 6,000 years, as Wikipedia's lapis lazuli entry notes. The blue on the Virgin's cloak was already ancient before the first brushstroke.
The spell began to break in 1824, when, as the same ultramarine entry records, a French industrial society offered 6,000 francs for an artificial version. Jean Baptiste Guimet found a process in 1826, and the synthetic pigment became cheap enough for wall paint. Two centuries later, the Virgin's color rides on a cloak with a wolf on the back.
How dark is navy blue next to cobalt and ice?
Navy is the darkest of the three: from across a field it reads close to black. Cobalt is a bright, saturated mid-blue, and ice blue is pale and cool, the color of a winter sky at noon. Magus Fawn's blue cloaks come in all three, and most designs blend them, so choose by the shade that rules the back.
Each shade has a pedigree. Cobalt colored Chinese blue-and-white porcelain from the late eighth or early ninth century, and the French chemist Louis Jacques Thénard discovered the modern pigment in 1802, according to Wikipedia's cobalt blue entry. Navy is named for the Royal Navy, whose first officers' uniform regulations in 1748 chose dark blue and white; in many navies today the uniform called navy blue is actually black, as Wikipedia's navy blue entry points out. Ice blue has no admiral or chemist behind it, only every frosty morning you've walked out into.
Every cloak in this guide shares one Magus Fawn build: a micro-mink poly outer (listed fabric weight 200 g/m²), lined in faux fur (black or white, your choice), with heavy hood drawstrings, four pockets (a deep one on each side, two inside for stashing, one of those zippered) and a double front zipper. Men's and women's listings share that spec and a unisex fit from XS to 5XL, and every cloak is made to order.
Cobalt to ice in one cloak: Dream Weaver. Our hero is the Blue Dream Weaver Men's Festival Cloak ($250), because it carries the whole range in one print. Turn around and a wolf turns with you: its amber-eyed face sits dead center on the back, framed by tall glassy shapes, while violet scrolls break toward the hem like surf on a cold beach. A wolf runs with its pack, and this cloak belongs to the friend who gets everyone from camp to the stage and back. Its siblings in other colors are in our Dream Weaver colorway guide.
The ice pick: Cosmic Flower of Life. The Blue Cosmic Flower Of Life Men's Festival Cloak ($250) is the palest blue in this guide. A fine net of overlapping circles covers every inch, and periwinkle scrolls curl over it in mirrored pairs from the shoulders to the hem. The Flower of Life is one circle repeated until it fills the field, and on a ground this pale it reads like ice crystals locking together: a cloak for a bright, cold morning.
The navy pick: Enochian Vision. The Enochian Vision Blue Women's Festival Cloak ($250) is the deep end of the pool. From a few steps away it reads almost black; come closer and the details rise like stars at nightfall: a pentagram ringed in blue between the shoulder blades, a watchful eye beneath it, then a gold book lying open above a dagger and a chalice, with rows of angelic script in indigo and violet running to the hem. Black's mystery, with a blue pulse. The story behind the script lives in our Enochian Vision colorway guide.
Why does a blue cloak stand out at dusk?
Because your eyes lean toward blue as the light fades. In dim light, the eye's peak sensitivity shifts toward the blue end of the spectrum, so reds darken while blues stay comparatively bright, a shift known as the Purkinje effect. Magus Fawn's cobalt cloaks hold their color deep into the blue hour.
Named for the Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkyně, the effect gets a garden example in Wikipedia's Purkinje effect entry: a geranium glows red against its leaves in sunlight, then turns dark red or nearly black at dusk while blue flowers nearby stay relatively bright. Our rave outfits by color guide follows the same idea onto a dark dance floor.
Cobalt on black: Angel Catcher. The Angel Catcher Blue Festival Cloak ($250) turns the volume all the way up. At the center of the back sits a hexagon packed with tiny glowing dots, like a honeycomb lit from inside, wrapped in pale scalloped petals, with a white six-pointed star above and another below, and dark knotwork braids across the lower half. As the sky dims, the cobalt seems to float off the black ground. Save it for the moment the beams come on, and give the lights something to answer.
Royal blue, head to hem: Metallic Blue Fractal. The Metallic Blue Fractal Women's Festival Cloak ($250) has no other color to hide behind. Royal, cobalt and near-midnight swirls fold over one another like deep water under a pier, with a sheen that makes the print look sculpted. Zipped to the collar, as in our photo, it's one clean column of blue. We think of fractals as psytrance's home language, so we'd wear this one to a psy stage at sundown.
Electric blue with a lime edge: Mushroom Flower of Life. The Blue Mushroom Flower of Life Men's Festival Cloak ($250) is the loudest blue here. Cobalt and violet panels carry neon-lime outlines that flare like signal lights, and down the back, ribbed, coiling forms wind through the symmetry as though they're halfway into becoming something with wings. We love it as a cloak about transformation: a little metamorphosis you can zip up.
How do you wear a blue cloak head to toe?
Go tonal or go opposite. Tonal means denim, navy or more blue underneath, so the cloak reads as one long column. Opposite means orange, copper or gold, which sit across the painter's color wheel from blue and make it glow. Magus Fawn cloaks open wide at the front, so whatever you wear underneath joins the look.
Tonal is the easy win: in our photo of the Blue Cosmic Flower of Life cloak, blue jeans and blue boots turn the whole figure into one cool stroke of color. Opposite is the bold play: on the traditional red-yellow-blue wheel, blue's complement is orange, as Wikipedia's entry on blue shows, so a copper bodysuit, an amber scarf or a stack of gold jewelry makes every blue in the print pop. Silver is the third road: the Metallic Blue Fractal photo shows how metallic boots make a zipped blue cloak look a few centuries ahead of schedule.
For the slow hours at camp, the Alien Cyberpunk Mech hooded blanket with ears ($150) pushes blue toward cyan. Picture an alien engine room drawn in ice blue and teal, with an eye watching from the shoulders, a white star in a ring at its heart, red flickers in the gaps and a Flower of Life low on the back. It's 300 g/m² poly fleece, cut as an oversized pullover with a cat-ear hood, a front quarter zip and one big front pocket, in one size (4XL).
From your order to the first snowfall
Size up if you plan to layer. Our FAQ suggests going bigger for outerwear, "sometimes even 2 sizes up to fit extra layers under," and if you're between sizes, email your measurements to art@magusfawn.com. We typically reply within 1–2 business days.
The hood, the faux fur and the double front zipper do the warm work. One buyer of a Madriax cloak wrote in March 2023: "I was in the snow accidentally and stayed incredibly warm thanks to this cloak! Has pockets too!" The Madriax design wears sapphire and violet too, on the same build as every cloak here.
Every cloak is made to order, with 7–11 business days of production and then 6–14 business days of delivery. For a cloak under the tree by December 24, ordering by Tuesday, November 17 covers the longest window in our FAQ. US shipping is free on orders of $70 and up, and every piece comes with one free size exchange, but the sizing email is still worth sending.
To wash, machine wash cold with like colors and no bleach, then hang dry (best) or tumble dry low; skip the iron and the dry cleaner. The dye-sublimated art won't fade or crack, so cobalt stays cobalt. Our cloak washing guide walks through the whole routine.
The blue that crossed the sea
Ultramarine got its name from a sea crossing, its price from a mountain and its fame from a painted cloak. Then chemists set it loose, and blue went everywhere. A hooded blue cloak with art is the newest stop on that road: cobalt for the laser hour, navy for mystery, ice for the bright cold days.
Choose the depth of blue that feels like you, and go stand somewhere the sky can see it.
Find your blue: women's cloaks · men's cloaks · all festival cloaks · hooded blankets
More cloak reading: purple cloaks, from Tyrian dye to mauve and winter cloaks for snow, city streets and cold festivals
Frequently asked questions
What is lapis lazuli?
Lapis lazuli is a deep-blue rock prized as a semi-precious stone since antiquity, often flecked with metallic-yellow pyrite and white calcite. Ground and purified, it becomes the pigment ultramarine. Its name comes from a Persian word that also gave English the color azure, and mines in northeast Afghanistan remain a major source today.
What blue did Vermeer use for the Girl with a Pearl Earring?
Ultramarine, the costly blue made from lapis lazuli. Wikipedia's ultramarine entry explains that Vermeer built the girl's famous turban from ultramarine mixed with lead white, then laid a final glaze of the pure pigment over it. He used this expensive blue throughout his paintings, and that turban shows what it can do.
Is blue the most popular favorite color?
In the United States and Europe, yes. According to Wikipedia's entry on blue, it's the color both men and women there are most likely to name as their favorite, and at least one recent survey found the same in several other countries, including China, Malaysia and Indonesia. That makes a blue cloak a gift with good odds.
Which Magus Fawn blue cloak is the darkest?
The Enochian Vision Blue cloak is the darkest in this guide: navy-black, with indigo script and gold details. The palest is the Blue Cosmic Flower of Life cloak, sky blue with periwinkle scrolls. For saturated cobalt and royal blue, choose Angel Catcher Blue or Metallic Blue Fractal. All share the same Magus Fawn build and unisex fit.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 (4.8★ from 147 reviews as of October 2026), and every piece is made to order here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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