Gofuku no Hi, a day late and a dollar short.

Yesterday, May 29, was  着物着ます (Gofuku no Hi), or Wear Kimono Day. It is a day to encourage kimono enthusiasts around the world to get out and wear kimono and have fun. Unfortunately, yesterday was an absolute no-go for me. I had work, I wasn’t feeling well to begin with, and it was incredibly hot and humid. So I decided to dress Tsukiko today instead.

I have been dying to pair this basho (banana leaf) houmongi and kikyou hakata obi for years now, and just never found the right opportunity until now. This kimono is one of the few that actually still fits me properly, but it’s still much more comfortable for me to dress the mannequin. I absolutely love the hints of icy blue in the leaves on the kimono and decided to accessorise in the same colour, to emphasise the cool feeling. I love how this outfit turned out, nearly monochrome but with the hits of blue for punch.

Liz in Bunny Kimono!

I’ve often said that being my friend is dangerous, and coming to visit me generally results in the guest being subjected to kitsuke. I decided to level things up this time, and when I went to Baltimore to visit my friend Elizabeth a few weeks back, I brought a kimono with me. She chose the bunny komon based on the photos of my collection, and I brought a selection of accessories that I thought would coordinate well with it and be easy to tie without too many accessories. We ended up choosing the taupe arabesque hanhaba obi, a hot pink obijime, and spade obidome.

For someone who has never worn kimono before, Liz took to it like a pro! Next time, maybe she’ll come up here to visit me and I’ll put her in something really elaborate.

I have to admit, this kimono fits her much better than it fits me. Oh, to have a shorter wingspan!

Items used in this coordination

Outfit of the Week: Graduation Style!

First of all, sorry for the lapse in posts! My laptop was out for repairs due to a faulty connector cable between the body and the screen, but it’s back now, which means I can resume semi-regular content updates 🙂

For this week, I decided to try my hand at a traditional graduation-style outfit of furisode and hakama. This particular furisode stirs up a lot of conflicting feelings for me. It was one of the first kimono I bought, despite technically being too old to wear it even back then. I also bought it while visiting someone who was very important to me during that phase of my life. We haven’t spoken in years, and the kimono still reminds me of that trip, but I was hoping doing something fun with it would help me distance myself from the awkward memories.*

Wrangling Tsukiko into the hakama proved a lot more difficult than I expected, and she looks a little rumpled, but the outfit still turned out pretty fantastic, I think. Unfortunately, for some reason, the date-eri looked INCREDIBLY NEON PINK in the photos, no matter what I did with lighting and then later in post-processing. I edited the photos to be a little more accurate. They’re still not perfect, but they are a better representation of the ensemble.

Items used in this coordination

*Update if anyone is curious, after some upheaval we’re closer than ever now. Maybe this was cathartic to the universe somehow.

Outfit of the Week: Tokaido Formal

Those of you who have been with me for a while probably already know about my obsession with all things relating to the 53 Stations of the Tokaido. I found this kurotomesode online several years ago, and desperately had to have it. It’s far too small for me, the silk is fairly fragile, and it’s way too formal for me to have worn anywhere anyway. And yet, here it is.

Technically, this sort of kimono needs an obi that’s primarily white and metallic, and a white obiage and obijime. However, I have this absolutely stunning gold-based Tokaido obi that Suara from the IG forums bought for me when I was in a bad place. It’s one of my most favourite pieces, both aesthetically and sentimentally, and I thought it would be absolutely perfect with this kimono. It’s also an utter joy to tie – stiff enough to keep its shape but not stiff enough to fight me. And no matter who or what I tie it on, I nearly always end up with one perfectly framed design on the drum. It’s a magical obi! I thought my gold and olive obijime and sky-blue obiage complemented the set quite perfectly too.

Items used in this coordination

Art Gallery – Sherlock Fan Artwork

This is a bit of a departure from my usual content in this section. Typically, the Art Gallery posts are reserved for traditional art or art I’ve received of myself in kimono and you’ve probably noticed this is neither 😉

One thing you may not know about me is that I am a huge fan of Sherlock, the BBC’s modern Sherlock Holmes remake. A while ago, a fan group I’m in arranged a challenge to re-imagine the main characters in a different time or cultural setting, so I did both. I had fun trying to keep the general feel and colour scheme of their clothing without making it feel overly anachronistic. And of course John Watson’s Sig Sauer P226R has been replaced with a set of swords.

And yes, that is my tumblr URL along the side. Feel free to follow me, but it’s a very incoherent blend of personal posts, fandom things, cute animals, and food posts. Nothing remotely like this blog.