Category: Fudangi First Friday

Fudangi First Friday – Kodomo no Hi

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Tomorrow (May 05th) is Kodomo no Hi, こどもの日, or Children’s Day. So of course, as in previous years, I had to get out my beloved koinobori obi. This year, I thought I’d coordinate it with this vintage shishi komon that is eventually going to live with Naomi. Until then, though, I figured I may as well have a little more fun with it!

Koinobori, or carp-shaped streamer flags, are a traditional decoration for the holiday, which is why I always use this obi somehow during this time of year. The other pieces were chosen primarily for their look, not any real symbolism. The haneri is a new one I got in a package from Ichiroya recently and I really liked how the pattern meshed with the kimono. I used other pale purple accessories to pull it all together. As much as I love this obi, I tend to forget what a nuisance it is to work with. It’s got seams in odd places, it’s very slippery, and it’s short even by vintage standards. I’m pretty sure it was a kimono or a juban at some point in its life, before it was remade into an obi. I also can’t believe I was ever able to wear it!

Thankfully I’m already starting to feel much better since my fall last Friday. I should be back at work by next week, and I have a bunch of content lined up for this month!

Items used in this coordination

Slytherin Kitsuke

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Or perhaps in Slytherin
You’ll make your real friends,
Those cunning folks use any means
To achieve their ends.

At last, we come to Slytherin. The kimono choice for this outfit was obvious; this green and silver yabane is the perfect colour combination. From there I decided to stick with a very vintage feel, which also suits the “old blood” mentality of many notable Slytherins. I’d never used this silvery-grey obi before, and I realised why as I was working with it. Not only is it frustratingly slippery, it’s a very strange size. Too wide to be a hanhaba obi, not wide enough to be full width, I had to fold it essentially in thirds. But because it’s stiff and slippery it fought me the entire time. I managed to get it to stay in place, but I don’t think it would last very long like this tied on an actual person. Thankfully the mannequin is good at holding still!

The haori is black, which isn’t a traditionally Slytherin colour, but it seems to me that when not in school robes, all the prominent members of the house tend to favour elegant black clothing. A long, sleek black silk haori with very subtle urushi crows on it seemed to fit the bill quite well.

The obijime is admittedly way too formal for the rest of the outfit, but the green shimmering beaded texture made me think of a beautiful snake when I first received it, so of course I had to use it to represent Slytherin house’s animal.

I’m also cheating a bit in that this outfit is doing double duty, it’s also entirely applicable for Fudangi First Friday. And with this, the Hogwarts House kitsuke project is complete! I had fun, but I’m looking forward to coordinating more “normal” outfits for a little bit. At least until another ridiculous theme project strikes my fancy.

Items used in this coordination

A Wild Diane Appears!

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You guys! Look at this! Recently a friend drew my attention to the fact that Kimonomachi shop on Rakuten now carries a selection of modern poly komon in size 4TL. Even when I was thinner, it was nigh-impossible for me to find kimono that were actually long enough for me. Now that I’m also significantly overweight, I’d pretty much given up wearing a kimono comfortably as a lost cause, but this one borders on being too big for me. Isn’t that wild?

Sadly, I only noticed my obiage had slipped off my makura after I took the photos. Oops!

It feels so good to be able to dress myself again, and so easily and comfortably too. It’s amazing how much of a difference the proper fit makes. I’d love to buy myself another one, but these kimono are not inexpensive at ¥ 14,000. I managed to get this one for significantly less because I had Rakuten points a PayPal gift card that needed to be used. I may cave in and buy myself a different pattern if I get a large tax return this year. We’ll see.

For reference, I am 179cm (5’10”) tall with a 121cm (48″) bust and a 36K bra, a 91cm (36″) natural waist, and 120cm (47″) hips. I typically wear a size 18 or 1X in North American clothing sizes. This kimono wraps easily from hip to hip, a full one and a half times my widest measurement. So if you’re a similar size and looking for something that will actually fit you properly, I cannot suggest these enough!

I paired the kimono with this moorish arch nagoya obi that couldn’t match better if I’d bought them together. The rusty orange-red of the obi makes the red accents in the kimono pop, and the turquoise base colour of the obi is the exact same as the arches. Looking at the photos, it’s quite clear that a standard otaiko musubi done with an average-sized nagoya obi just looks disproportionately small and odd on my frame, so whenever I actually wear this kimono out to an event I will likely go with a hanhaba or chuuya obi tied in something I can control the size of better. Vibrant lemon yellow accessories made everything pop, and I couldn’t resist using my obidome with snails on it. It’s too cute for words, and ties in with the warm creme colour on the flowers of the kimono.

As a final note, a little reminder that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I dressed myself in this outfit last Thursday and took photos, with the intention of posting it on Fudangi Friday. I transferred, edited, and uploaded the photos. And then on Friday morning I settled in at work, and during a quiet moment started drafting the entry. It was at that point I realised I had the kimono on backwards. Somehow I’d managed to dress myself and then take and edit photos without ever noticing! And as much as I encourage playing with rules when it comes to kimono, wrapping it backwards (right side over top of the left) is only ever done for a body being prepared for a funeral, and it is not a rule I would ever consider breaking unless it was for a very explicit purpose like a costume. So I scrapped my initial plan and re-dressed myself today. Honestly, I’m glad I did, because I managed to tie the obi much more neatly and the lighting was a lot better as well.

Items used in this coordination

Fudangi First Fr… Saturday?

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Well, that didn’t last long. Only a few months in and I missed a Fudangi First Friday. I was at work until late yesterday and then ran errands afterwards and picked up dinner on the way home. By the time I’d settled in, eaten, and decompressed it was too late to do anything. But I’m doing it today, which is better than not doing it at all, right?

I may not have made any resolutions for 2018, but I have decided that I want to try to re-use more of my collection, especially things I bought for one particular coordination. It seems incredibly wasteful of me to leave things languishing in a cabinet instead of enjoying them and sharing them here. So for today’s outfit, I decided it was time to bust out the Starfleet kimono and try to do something different with it.

Seeing the two outfits together, it’s very clear that I basically did the same outfit with a slightly different obi, so I’m not sure how successful I was doing something “different”, but I still quite like the way it turned out. Heck, I even used the same yellow haneri! I had fun making a wider, otaiko-style bow with a hanhaba obi and played with the objime knot a little though. One of the great things about Fudangi Friday is that since it’s more relaxed and casual, it encourages people to experiment a little. I just need to work on breaking out of my comfort zone and playing with more unexpected colour/pattern combinations.

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Kits-Mas Day 12 – The Grand Finale

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Okay, maybe not such a grand finale after all, but a finale nonetheless! Today’s outfit serves two purposes – the last day of this project as well as Fudangi First Friday.

This kimono, despite being quite casual, has always looked somewhat festive to me. Something about tartans and plaids just feel like Christmas. It’s a common pattern on wrapping paper, and (as you can see in my photos) tree skirts and decorations. So using this kimono in an outfit was a given, clearly.

Pairing it up with red to make it punchier might be a fairly straightforward and expected coordination but it just works so well! I love how the faint stripes in the obi echo the other colours of green and navy. Initially I had no plans to take a picture of the back of the mannequin without the red haori, but I realised as I was tying the obi that the karuta musubi looks like a present, so I had to capture that too.

Okay, so this is certainly not the most dramatic or exciting coordination of the project, it’s comfortable and cute and worked out quite well. It was also easy to put on after a frustratingly long day that started with me slipping on ice and smashing my elbow and ended up with me nearly being trapped at work because the lock on the front door froze. I honestly didn’t have the energy for anything more complicated.

While this has been a mostly enjoyable project, if I’ve learnt one thing from it, it’s to never commit to twelve consecutive days of anything, no matter how much you enjoy it. Between holiday stress, work, family stuff, etc, I am burnt the heck out right now . I think I will be taking a little hiatus from blogging for a bit, maybe a week or ten days. I’ve got lots of stuff in the works though, so I promise I’ll be back in full force very soon! <3

Items used in this coordination