Tag: mint

Lovely Winter Landscape

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This obi was the first piece I ever got with a Stations of the Tokaido motif, and it’s very special to me. When I was hunting for inspiration for a new coordination I looked out the window and it hit me. Everything is very snowy and wintery and monochrome here in Montreal, and I wanted to capture that feeling of cold, blustery, no-contrast weather. Ideally a pale blue-grey iromuji would probably have worked better but I don’t own one, and this one is close enough in colour. Also the heavy texture looks like windblown snow-drifts, which helped reinforce the feeling I was going for.

I chose an obiage and an obijime in an almost-identical icy mint colour to keep things very monochrome and ensure all the focus was on the obi.

As pretty as winter is, I am very ready for it to GO AWAY. I want grass and flowers and longer days, please! Is winter bad where you are? Are you also fed up with it?

Items used in this coordination

Terrific Texture

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As much as it pained me to remove last week’s coordinate, it was time to change the mannequin. I thought for today I would focus on textures, an often-overlooked facet of kimono style and construction. This outfit may have no real variation in colour, and yet it’s anything but boring!

I paired my richly-textured mint iromuji with a tone-on-tone dusty pink hakata obi. Not only do these two pieces play well together texture-wise, the muted colour palettes complement each other perfectly. I emphasised the texture aspect even more with this haneri with a thick woven kiku design, a white shibori obiage (which is a bit too formal for this coord but it worked so well thematically) and a a white beaded obijime to introduce one last texture without adding more colour. I even arranged the obiage so the ruffled hem was visible, just to add one more layer of interest. Typically that edge is tucked away out of sight, but I thought it was a nice little touch.

I really like how this all came together. It’s very simple but also feels very luxurious, due to the nature of all the fabrics together. It’s even more effective in person, but you’ll just have to take my word on that!

Items used in this coordination

MonoKimono Challenge – Misty Mint

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Does anyone else love Misty Mint candies? If you’ve never had them, they’re these wonderful, creamy, melty mint candy drops in beautiful pastel colours. They don’t make them anymore, sadly, and even if they did I couldn’t eat them since I’m allergic to dairy now, alas. However, the colour of this iromuji makes me think so fondly of them!

This coordination is basically a revisit of this monochrome outfit, but I wanted to do something softer, and without the hakama. This one feels more wearable, overall. I used the same kimono and haneri, but switched up to this shiny fukuro obi and accessories that blend in with the kimono itself. I had fun doing a sort of bunko variation with the obi, I quite like how it looks and it was very quick to do.

It’s also very interesting to me how this colour family photographs. In the original outfit with the hakama, it looks much more blue, today’s photos look much more green, and the catalogue photos below feel somewhere in between. All due to ambient light, time of day, and other external factors.

We’re halfway through the #monokimono challenge! I’m proud of myself for sticking with it, and already have plans for the second half of the year. Are you doing the challenge? If so, please share links in the comments, I would love to see!

Items used in this coordination

One Kimono, Four Ways – Week 4: Cute and Casual

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At last, we’re coming to the end of this month’s theme project. It’s been fun, but honestly I am glad it’s over. I’m getting a little tired of this iromuji! For the last outfit, I decided to try to accomplish the one thing this style of kimono can be very difficult to do; a simple, casual cooordinate. Typically, iromuji can be a lot of things, but relaxed town-wear is not one of them. To make it work, I stuck with otherwise casual pieces. A coloured haneri, a bright meisen haori, and one of my favourite nagoya obi all in shades of purple all pop against the cool mint tone of the kimono itself. The early-afternoon sunlight today helped to keep things soft and warm. I’m not sure this outfit was as successful as some of my other attempts during this experiment, but I do really love how the haori and kimono look together.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with his whole experiment. It’s been really interesting to work within the constraints of the one single kimono. I may do it again sometime later with something other than an iromuji, to make it more of a challenge. I’ve also got some fun craft projects in the works and I can’t wait to share them with you all.

One Kimono Four Ways

Items used in this coordination

One Kimono, Four Ways – Week 3: Punchy and Popping

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One of the great things about iromuji is how they can allow you to really focus attention on something other than the kimono itself. They make a great neutral canvas for a really bright or busy obi. I decided for this week’s entry that I’d do a really high-contrast coordination with a lot of “punch” to it, and this obi was the perfect place to start. It’s a very special obi; I received it anonymously from some lovely person online. I suspect their intent was to have me coordinate it with my Shah Mosque houmongi, but in the end the styles and colours were too different and I could never get them to work together. This kimono, however, is ideal. It’s a similar background colour to the houmongi and the orange-red of the obi really pops against it, but it doesn’t compete with the pattern on the obi itself. It’s a wonderfully neutral foil for the gorgeous obi, and the colours couldn’t work better together if they’d been made to go together. I’d initially thought of using a third bright colour (yellow or pink) for the obiage and obijime but then I remembered these pieces, and everything just clicked.

We’ve also got a special guest photobomber today! Those of you who are longtime readers have probably seen Vinnie before. He usually avoids the mannequin but today he decided he wanted to be the star of the show.

I hope you’re enjoying seeing these posts as much as I’m enjoying doing them! We’ve got one left, and then it’s time to focus on newer things.

One Kimono Four Ways

Items used in this coordination