Month: May 2020

Gofuku no Hi 2020

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Gofuku no Hi is a bit of a play on words – May 29 is written as Go-Fu-Ku (5-2-9), and “gofuku” is also a word for traditional clothing. So it’s become an international day to encourage everyone to wear kimono!

As I’ve often mentioned, I’m currently too big to wear almost any of my kimono comfortably. I would have put on one of my modern plus-sized poly komon, but good lord is it too hot to deal with all that today. Thankfully I came across this video by stylist Sala Okabe on Facebook (who you should totally be following if you’re not already!) showing how to easily wear a kimono as a dress without any alteration or damage. It’s actually quite similar to how I styled Lynn in the mod michiyuki at the Otakuthon Fashion Show last summer.

I decided to use my beloved bright-red kiku houmongi, which also happens to be the first kimono I ever purchased. I recently cut all the blue out of my hair, which gives me a lot more leeway colour-wise. To suit the style and era of the kimono I went with a sort of kitschy-retro vibe, pairing some vintage-inspired shoes, my beloved pearls, and this ridiculously adorable purse that looks like a camera.

My intial plan was to go to the park near my house, but I ended up nixing that because it’s just way too hot to be out in the sun, so you guys get to enjoy my living room yet again.

 

Overall I think this was a very successful experiment! I love how the kimono-as-dress looks, and it’s definitely super comfortable. Next time I’ll try it with a slightly bigger one to prevent the slit up the front, but since I am wearing a little tunic underneath it’s not a huge issue.

Did you dress for Gofuku no Hi? If you did, please share photos, I’d love to see!

 

Picrew.Me Kimono Avatar Creators part 2

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I know things have been rather quiet here, and I do apologise. I’ve been doing a lot of back-end work, stuff that keeps the site running efficiently, but I realise that while it’s necessary it’s also not very interesting for you guys!

One of the things I did was update last summer’s Picrew Kimono Avatars post so it was responsive and worked on mobile devices. While doing that, I realised it’s one of my most popular and most frequently revisited posts, so I thought maybe it was time to do another one! I promise, there are actual kimono coordinations and some book reviews coming up, but in the meantime I hope you have fun with this. If you’re new to Picrew.me and aren’t sure how the interface works since it’s all in Japanese, there’s an explanation and tutorial in the previous post.

Female Avatars

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Male Avatars

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I hope that this table setup works better on mobile devices for you, and that you have lots of fun playing with these avatars while we’re all stuck inside our homes!

Things Will Get Better

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First of all, thank you for your patience. I haven’t posted in over a week now – the April A to Z challenge was apparently more exhausting than I’d realised! I’ve also been fighting off nasty allergies and a bout of pericarditis, and wasn’t really up to much. But things are tough for everyone right now, so I thought the least I could do was bring everyone a bit of brightness and hope.

Since the rainbow has become the symbol of hope and optimism in this time of overwhelming fear and confusion, I thought it might be fun to turn a few of my old monochrome coordinations into a kimono rainbow! I don’t have much in the way of pure orange kimono (orange is quite possibly my least favourite colour) but peach is pretty close, right? XD

I promise I’ll be back with new content soon. I’ve got outfits to put together, books to review, and crafts to make. But in the meantime, I hope this silly little rainbow brings a bit of colour and happiness to your life!

If you’d like to see close-up detail shots of each outfit, here you go!