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

Dancing Queen

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This is one of those coordinations that’s been on my to-do list pretty much since the day the kimono arrived. I love this dance piece and I really wanted to pair it with the orange hakata side of this vintage chuuya obi and do a fun odori-influenced outfit. For some reason the photographs don’t capture either orange properly, they’re a much better match in real life.

I decided to go with an ochre haneri to kind of reflect the gold of the kimono, a gold and silver obijime for the same reason, and this red shibori obiage was to draw attention to the red date-eri that’s sewn into the kimono. A simple bunko musubi literally ties it all together, a fairly standard one for odori outfits.

Also, every time I hear or think of Dancing Queen by ABBA now, this ridiculous video gets stuck in my head. If you have a few minutes and need a good laugh, I can’t recommend it enough!

Items used in this coordination

Matchy Matchy Mums

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There’s two things “wrong” with this outfit, but when has that ever stopped me? I had another outfit planned for this week’s coordination but when this kiku furisode arrived I knew I had to pair it up with my purple kiku obi. Normally you wouldn’t match the motif of the kimono to the obi, especially not identically stylised ones like this, but the colours and the round mums were just too perfect to pass up. I also tied the obi in niijudaiko, which isn’t a musubi you’d typically pair with furisode, but I thought it added an interesting, more mature feeling to the outfit.

Since I was on such a matchy kick, I ran with accessories that were also perfect matches to some of the colours in the kimono. This outfit definitely feels very autumnal, which also happens to be my favourite season, so of course I love the end result!

What do you think? Do you like to understand the rules but deviate from them now and again, or do you prefer to stick to what works? I think both have merit; so long as you can explain why you chose to break a rule and aren’t doing it in a formal situation or stealing the focus from someone else, sometimes it can work out really well!

Items used in this coordination

Seijin Shiki 2022 – Ice Princess

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Seijin Shiki (Coming of Age Day) 2022 was this past Monday, January 10. I should probably have done this outfit back then, but work kicked my butt. Better late than never, right?

It’s traditional for young adults who are turning 20 in the coming year to dress up. For young women, this means a beautiful furisode and accessories, and because it takes place in the winter, a fur stole is often used as well. These outfits can vary from subdued to very, very bold, depending on both the location and the personal style of the wearer.

My tastes tend to lead more towards the “mature”, which makes sense because I am literally as old as two people celebrating seijin shiki combined would be. So this outfit is more quiet than a lot of options, but I love it nonetheless. I decided to for a wintery, icy pastel coordinate.

I went for my well-loved blue and pink kiku furisode. Since pastel blue and pastel pink together make pastel purple, this lilac and silver obi seemed like the perfect complement, along with a purple haneri and obiage. A pink and silver obijime was the finishing touch the outfit needed, a bit of contrast against the obi while still flowing with the subtle pastel vibe of the whole thing.

I did try to make a more dramatic and showy obi musubi, but this particular obi is so soft and floppy it just would not hold a more structural shape. I eventually caved in and just went with a sort of poofy bunko musubi. It’s not quite what I originally had in mind but I think it worked out alright.

This Outfit has a Secret

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And that secret is efficiency! At first glance there’s nothing “unusual” about this, it just looks like an everyday casual coordinate, right? What you can’t tell immediately is that both the kimono and the obi are two-piece “easy-wearable” items. The two-piece, or nibushiki, kimono, can be worn with an obi over it like this to resemble a regular kimono, or it can be worn more like a dochugi and wrap skirt. It’s common to see pieces like this worn by restaurant workers and other people who need to be comfortable and able to change easily. It’s also synthetic and went through the wash once already with literally  no ill effects.

It also has the benefit of being much easier to adjust if you’re a non-standard size, as you can wrap the bottom half however you’re most comfortable and then adjust the top half separately. It makes dressing so much easier, more convenient, and more accessible.

The tsuke-obi is more common. I’ve had this one in my collection for literal decades and it used to be in very heavy rotation. Ones like this, with an otaiko-style musubi, are much easier to camouflage than the butterfly-style polyester ones that come with beginner’s yukata, and I think with the right accessories they’re perfectly acceptable for a more casual occasion.

The salmon pink accessories were a bit of a surprise, I will be honest. I liked how the navy obijime tied in to the kimono and figured I’d run with it. It’s unexpected but it works! My gut instinct was to go with the same yellow set I use for basically… everything. I’m glad I refrained.

Items used in this coordination