KIMONO

PHOTO: Caspiano YT

How the Kimono has Influenced World of Fashion

A Global Fashion Icon

The kimono today enjoys greater prominence andKimono

Influenced the Fashion

Apr. 22, 2020 • Vol. 1 • KIMONO Fukai Akiko

Japonism and the Kimono Craze

Researching the enduring fascination with the tradi the kimono on Western aesthetics. In the seventeenth century, chief factors (traders) of the Dutch East India Company in Japan brought padded kimonos back with them when they returned to Holland, and kimono were prized as indoor wear for men. Lightweight and warm, these exotic Japanese dressing gowns were called Japonse rok. They grew to be extremely popular, appearing in portraits of the time and even spawning copies in neighboring countries.

The impact modes of art like ukiyo-e had on impres sionist painters is well documented. However, less well

fashion. The relationship between Parisian fashion and the kimono developed in natural progression. Wom en fell in love with the beautiful and exotic clothing, wearing the garments to relax in at home. Designers in Paris and London then started to use kimono fabric for their own creations. Japanese-inspired designs eventu ally came to be used for silk fabrics by textile makers in Lyon, marking their debut on the Parisian fashion scene.

Paris designers at the beginning of the twentieth cen form of the kimono. Around 1910, coats and dresses with silhouettes echoing those of uchikake kimonos or the kimonos worn by the beauties depicted in ukiyo-e prints began to appear. The nukiemon décolletage style of lowering the rear hem to expose the nape of the neck became popular, along with long sleeves and de tails evocative of ornately decorated obi sashes.

Drawing on Japan’s traditions of exquisite craftsmanship and design sensibility, it incorporated kimono-inspired designs into otherwise sober-looking business-svtyle suits to create a contemporary pop style.

PHOTO: Kapuki

PHOTO: Satoshi Hirayama

A wave of enthusiasm for all things Japanese swept Europe and the United states during the second half of the nineteenth century; this came to be known as Japonism.

Apr. 22, 2020 • Vol. 1 • KIMONO “ ”

From this period, the structure and shape of dress changed as designers moved away from obeying the shape of the human body and began to embrace the wider possibilities of a freer range of forms.

PHOTO: Emile Guillemot

Pioneering designers like Vionnet and Poiret drew on the straight cut construction technique of the kimono, and in the 1920s fashion was increasingly marked by cylindrical designs composed of straight lines made by sewing together rectangular-shaped pieces. This brought a new methodology into traditional European dressmaking, which was based on the ideals of volume and three-dimensionality. In this way, the kimono went ed fashion as a whole.

diverse relationship between the kimono and Western fashion from the second half of the nineteenth cen tury to the present. The show opened at the Newark Museum in October 2018 before touring to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in February 2019. It will travel to the Cincinnati Museum in June, completing its tour of three major American cities by the fall. This

the three museums in the United States. Along with

Western fashion, it introduces the works of Japanese designers from the perspective of this legacy.

PHOTO: Abby Chung

kimono: catwalk at

PHOTO: Adil Zhanbyrbayev

kyoto to at the V&A

Explores the History, and Global Appeal, of Japan’s National Dress

Opening in the lead-up to the Summer Olym pics in Tokyo, Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, looks at this traditional garment through the lens of fashion from the 1660s to the present day, when there is, states co-curator Josephine Rout, a “real kimono revival happeninvenera tion, “who saw the kimono as kind of old-fash ioned and a bit too traditional. Younger gener ations,” she notes, “don’t have quite the same hang-ups, regarding kimonos.”

Laird Borrelli-Persson

Kimonos, used by men and women, are the national dress of Japan and were worn with regularity until after the Second World War, when they went from being everyday for special occasions,” according to Rout. What’s thrilling to her curator’s eye is to see the circularity in the present-day revival. The last time kimonos were fashionable garments was in the early 20th centtury, and what’s à la mode today are kimonos from that earlier era. No longer ceremonial garb, kimonos are, notes Rout, “something that people can wear and have fun with again. And that’s true whether the garment is vintage or created by a new gen of kimono designers responding to the revival.”

PHOTO: Belle Co

Curators Rout and Anna Jackson want to show how truly dynamic and global kimonos—de scribed as “the ultimate symbol of Japan”—are, and that they have had almost “viral” appeal for most of their history. The starting point for the exhibition is the mid-17th century.

Kimonos started being imported to Europe a century later, where they caused a stir. The exchange was two-way, as kimonos then started to be made using imported European fabrics. The late 19th-century Japonisme movement

Art Nouveau) created a market for “kimonos for foreigners.” At the same time, the domestic market, the curators note, was “transformed by the use of European textile technology and chemical dyes.”

peal to early 20th-century designers too, espe cially those, like Paul Poiret, Mariano Fortuny, and Madeleine Vionnet, who freed the female form rather than lacing it into unnatural shapes.

Examples of kimono-inspired looks from Alex ander McQueen, Duro Olowu, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Thom Browne, and others are included in this exhibition, which demonstrates, says Rout, how kimonos have “existed within this really dynamic global fashion system almost 400 years”—and also that good design lends itself to sustainability.

The simplicity of the kimono’s single-seam construction throws the attention on the material (its colors, motifs, patterns) from which it is made.

PHOTO: Joachim Theis

KIMONO

PHOTO: Andre Benz