A strange coat is a pretty good way to find your people.
Somewhere along the way, these coats became more than things we wear when the desert gets cold. They became signals—little beacons for the curious, the playful, the builders, the dreamers, and the beautifully unreasonable humans who still believe life should occasionally feel extraordinary.
Meet Katrina Ponina—the designer, maker, Burner and community builder behind Bohocoats. She started by making strange things she wanted to wear herself. The people came first. The company grew around them.
01 / Meet Katrina
Oh. You’re one of us.
Bohocoats has connected Katrina to thousands of people through invisible threads. One of her favorite things still happens when someone new walks into the showroom. Before they really know each other, she often has the same feeling: Oh. You’re one of us.
The jokes land. The stories begin. And somehow a coat becomes the beginning of another friendship.
02 / Apparently, there were signs
Three-year-old me in a bright pink coat.
An archival treasure.
Long before Bohocoats, Burning Man, LEDs, art cars or fashion weeks, there was this. Zero interest in blending in. I would love to tell you I had a master plan. I did not. But apparently the attraction to color, texture, drama and self-expression started early.
03 / Before Bohocoats was Bohocoats
Conceived in the desert. Made on the floor.
I first came to Burning Man in 2011. And like so many things that later change your life, I had absolutely no idea what had just begun.
I started making things I wanted to wear myself. Then I made pieces for friends. Then friends of friends wanted them. There was no fashion house. No polished studio. No master plan. There were paper patterns spread across an apartment floor, strange fabrics everywhere, experiments that worked, experiments that did not, and the growing feeling that maybe this thing had a life of its own.
2013. Apartment floor. Paper patterns. No idea this would become a company.One of the first Bohocoats prototypes.2011. Katrina’s very first Burning Man.2013 Burning Man. First Bohocoats prototype.
By 2015, Bohocoats had officially become a brand. But really, the people came first. The company grew around them.
04 / Finding our people
Somehow, the coats kept finding the people.
To choose a coat like this, you usually have to possess a certain willingness to be seen. Our people are difficult to categorize. Some build companies. Some build art cars. Some make music. Some create communities. Some dance until sunrise. Some are wildly accomplished. Some are just beginning to discover who they want to become.
But there is usually something underneath it all: curiosity, playfulness, imagination, irreverence, and a refusal to live entirely inside convention. Status was never the interesting part. The people are. The coats simply keep giving us an excuse to find one another.
05 / Art of Steam · Steamology
Then I joined a group of people who thought the desert needed a Russian sauna.
Art Of Steam—also known as Steamology—already existed when I found them. I joined the project, eventually became a co-founder, and fell completely in love with the idea behind it: create something beautiful, nourishing and slightly absurd simply because people would love experiencing it.
At Burning Man, that meant bringing a Russian-style banya to the middle of the desert. Heat. Steam. Spa rituals. Hospitality. Dusty exhausted humans becoming human again.
05 / Luna the ArtCrane
Luna began as a dream long before she became a crane.
For years I wanted to build an art car. But not simply a beautiful vehicle. I wanted to create a platform: a moving frame around the performance, something artists could step into and completely transform.
Eventually that dream became Luna the ArtCrane. My role became strangely close to HR—except instead of recruiting for an office, I was helping find people to build a giant moving artwork for the desert. The first major build happened in roughly two and a half months. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting. It was probably insane. And somehow Luna came alive.
I am one of Luna’s five co-founders. But “co-founder” still sounds suspiciously professional. I think of myself more as one of her mamas.
06 / We don’t really know when to stop
“I don’t know how” is not always a reason not to do it.
At some point I decided I wanted to make a fiber-optic coat. There was one small problem. I did not know how to solder. So I learned.
Then LEDs became interesting. Then mapping them became interesting. Then programming became interesting. Eventually a coat could behave less like a coat and more like a wearable screen—transforming into fire, water or whatever else we could convince light to become.
My dad is an engineer. Seeing me suddenly sitting there with a soldering iron was apparently not a plot twist he expected. But this is still how we work: if an idea sounds exciting enough, “I don’t know how” is not necessarily a reason not to do it. Sometimes it simply means: Okay. Apparently we learn that next.
07 / When people you admire enter the story
The strangest full-circle moments.
Growing up in Belarus and the Russian-speaking cultural world, musicians like Boris Grebenshchikov were not simply names on a playlist. They were icons. Meeting Boris—and seeing my work become part of that world—was one of those moments where life briefly feels impossible in the best way.
Boris GrebenshchikovJohn HalcyonAbove & BeyondLimited-edition collaboration with Android Jones
Over the years, Bohocoats pieces have also found their way to artists and creators including Above & Beyond, John Halcyon, Third Eye Blind, Gogol Bordello, Rising Appalachia, Okean Elzy and Germán Garmendia. One of my favorite full-circle moments was creating a limited-edition collaboration with Android Jones, an artist whose work I admired long before we ever created anything together.
The names are fun. But what still excites me more is the invisible thread: make the things you love long enough, and sometimes the people who inspired you eventually appear on the other end.
08 / Somewhere in all this, it became a fashion company
Evidence of what can grow from making something strange for yourself.
There have been runway shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. Bohocoats has appeared in major publications, traveled through festivals and showrooms, collaborated with extraordinary artists, and sent pieces to places I never expected to know our name. I’m deeply proud of all of it. But the milestones were never really the point.
09 / The latest chapter
Latest level unlocked: motherhood + Hawaiʻi.
Life had another plot twist waiting. I moved to Hawaiʻi with my baby. Bohocoats did not.
Our Los Angeles workspace is still very much alive. The seamstresses are sewing. There are rolls of materials everywhere. Coats are being made. Production keeps moving. I’m simply participating in a slightly more 2026 way now: video calls, emails, designs, decisions, production questions, baby in one arm, phone in the other.
The scenery changed. The company kept moving. And somehow motherhood has made one thing even clearer: I don’t want growing up to mean becoming less alive.
10 / What Bohocoats is really about
Bohocoats is about permission.
Permission to be yourself. Permission to be visible. Permission to be elegant one night and completely feral the next.
But it goes deeper than clothes. Bohocoats is about questioning the status quo. It’s about authenticity—not the polished version, not the socially acceptable version: the version where you actually recognize yourself. It’s about freedom from invisible rules, freedom from boring yourself, freedom from living on autopilot.
It’s about dreaming without immediately asking whether the dream is practical. Building the art car. Opening the sauna. Learning to solder. Moving to an island. Making the coat. Starting the project. Calling the person. Going to the desert. Trying the thing. Seeing what happens.
Maybe adulthood isn’t supposed to erase your inner child. Maybe we’re supposed to protect them. Feed them. Give them better tools. Bigger dreams. And occasionally a spectacular coat.
11 / Welcome
Maybe the coat is just the beginning.
The people you recognize before you’ve met them. The friendship that begins because somebody walks over and says, “Okay, where did you get that?” The ridiculous idea that becomes real because nobody in the room says no quickly enough.
Maybe that’s what these coats have been doing all along. Acting as signals. Little flags for finding one another.
to be brutally honest the price per yard of fabric here is pricey, but they have fabrics that I either have not seen anywhere else OR that I used to find elsewhere but are now out of production and now can't find anywhere else, and so the prices are worth it for those furs. Concerning this specific beige color of feather fur: I had already tried to buy it from 3 other sellers and had just send me the brown version of this fur as if to say "eh close enough" so I asked this seller if for sure they had the beige, and they responded quickly to confirm that yes I was getting the beige, and I did get the beige! Finally! I have been needing this fur so bad for a client project!
A stunning coat, excellent quality, feels great and comfortable to wear on its inside or out. I love the option to remove the sleeves as well, which creates a new style when it gets a little warmer dancing outside. Can’t wait to wear it at festivities. It will also be perfect for those cold nights at the mountain cottage.
My coat is magical, and it has already received two overt threats of impending theft should my head turn. The transaction and communication have been wonderful. I would recommend Katrina to anyone seeking something unique and beautiful.
Dear J.R., thank you so much for your amazing review! I’m thrilled to hear that you’re loving your Blue Dharma Dragon Fur Coat. It sounds like it’s already making quite an impression! ✨ Your kind words about the transaction and communication mean the world to us. I’m so happy that you had a wonderful experience. Thank you for recommending Boho Coats to others seeking something unique and beautiful.
