Tag: gold

The Twelve Days of Kits-Mas

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Merry Christmas to any and all celebrating today! You might remember me mentioning recently that I had a silly ambitious project in the works, Well, here it is!

Today is the first day of Christmastide, or what is often referred to as the Twelve Days of Christmas. A lot of folks seem to think it’s the twelve days leading up to Christmas, but that’s because over time it’s become sort of merged with Advent. In reality, Christmastide runs from December twenty-fifth to Epiphany on January sixth. My plan is to do one themed outfit per day, mostly revolving around the traditional colours of red, green, and gold, but with some variations. Kits-mas is a combination of the words kitsuke and Christmas, because I’m a sucker for a terrible portmanteau.

For the first day I went very simple and traditional; my favourite vintage houmongi in a rich red, paired with a green and gold hakata obi and metallic accessories. I wanted something classic that just screamed “Christmas” for today, and I definitely accomplished that! I also decided to change the mannequin’s usual position to show off our tree and decorations. It seemed fitting.

Be sure to check back every day for a new coordination until January 6th. 🙂

Items used in this coordination

 

Warm Pink on a Cold Day

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This warm pink beauty made her debut as Aurora‘s outfit in the Disney Princess Kimono Project, but while I was working on that I saw these two pieces together and knew I had to coordinate them at some point. Since winter has finally hit in full force here in Montreal, I was in the mood for something happy and pleasant-feeling, and this seemed like the perfect thing.

The gold tones of the gorgeous Tokaido obi are offset by small hints of a dusty rose-raspberry colour (visible on the roofs in the back view photo) that is nearly identical to the kimono itself. There are also areas of pale blue on the obi, similar to the details in the kimono motif. Simple pink and metallic accessories pulled everything together; even the leaves on the haneri are gold. This makes for a very classic and cohesive outfit that wouldn’t be out of place at a wedding or formal event. I like how it came together very much and could easily see myself (or nearly anyone, really) wearing it at some point in the future if I could get it to fit properly.

This will probably be the last mannequin coordination for a little while; I’ve got something silly and quite possibly over-ambitious in the works for the next few weeks. There will still be updates and plenty of reasons to visit, but I just wanted to assure you all that this is still the primary focus of my blog, even though it may not look like it as the holidays creep up on us all. There will be outfits to make up for it soon enough.

Items used in this coordination

Rusty and Warm

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Talk about sliding in under the wire! I thought doing Fudangi Friday once a month would be achievable but here I am, only the second month in, posting at the end of a very long day. I worked tonight and then ran some errands afterwards, so it was quite late when I got in. Thankfully, part of the beauty of this challenge is to encourage comfortable, relaxed kitsuke and try to break ourselves of the habit of insisting on overly formal, overly rigid style.

I grabbed my rusty wool komon because it felt warm and seasonal and perfect for this sort of a challenge, and realised that the mustard yellow reverse side of my Tokaido hanhaba obi would be the perfect complement. I can’t believe I’ve never paired these two up before! I really love the peek of red in the musubi that echoes the kimono so well. I made a point of fluffing the bow out to make sure it was visible.

A yellow haneri that matches the obi helped cozy things up further, and I pulled out a thin white and green obijime to echo the faint pattern in the kimono. It wasn’t necessary to hold the obi in place, but I like the finishing touch it gives to the whole outfit. I can definitely see myself wearing this exactly as it is at some point, and being incredibly comfortable and relaxed while doing so.

Items used in this coordination

Vaguely Reminiscent of a Turkey

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Today is Thanksgiving in that big weird nation just south of me. Here in Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October and it’s more of a generalised harvest festival than a celebration of any specific event involving settlers. It’s still a bit fraught, but it doesn’t have quite the same baggage attached to it. Last month, I posted a harvest-themed ikebana in honour of our celebration, but since the bulk of my readers and many of my friends and family are from the good ol’ US of A I thought it would be fun to do a thanksgiving themed outfit today.

I don’t really have anything with appropriate motifs, but then I remembered this gorgeous purple tsukesage with peacocks on it. The peacocks are quite abstracted, and if you squint, they totally look like turkeys, right? Humour me here.

Last time I coordinated this particular kimono I went for a very sleek monochrome look, so this time I wanted to do something a little more traditional. This orange and gold obi is an enormous nuisance to tie because it’s incredibly stiff, but it had a sort of festive harvest vibe to it which went well with the theme I was going for. The orange also pops very well against the rich plum of the kimono, I think. I kept the accessories in the same warm-toned range, leaning a bit more towards dark pink but still cohesive.

Unfortunately the weather is garbage today and the light in the living room was quite terrible, so these photos are overexposed in places and underexposed in others, but they still convey the mood I was going for.

If you are observing thanksgiving today, I hope you have a wonderful one. Spend time with your loved ones, eat far too much food, and take a moment to appreciate what you’ve got. Have a good long weekend!

Items used in this coordination

Harvest Gold

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Does anyone remember harvest gold appliances? Thankfully we never had any in my household but we did have an avocado green dishwasher for a very long time! It’s funny how colours go and out of fashion, isn’t it? And how they can look so lovely on a kimono but so ghastly in a kitchen!

This kimono was actually the emergency back-up I purchased for Belle’s outfit, after it seemed like the one I wanted had got lost in the post. Eventually the first one did show up, so I got to use it as I’d planned, but it seemed like quite a shame for this gorgeous vintage piece to languish in storage so I vowed to do something with it today.

My initial plan was a gold obi, but since I wasn’t doing the Belle outfit anymore I figured I had more freedom, but for some reason I had a heck of a time finding a coordination that did the piece justice. Most of my obi were either too flashy and metallic or too dark, and the soft, delicate quality of the yuzen around the hem would have been completely overwhelmed. Then I thought I could use the yellow nagoya obi I used last week but that seemed repetitive and overly monotone. Then I debated an orange hakata and a grey masculine-feeling nagoya that both didn’t quite work either. Then I found this beautiful dusty taupe nagoya with a subtle bit of gold. It perfectly balanced the kimono, pulling out the grey-brown tones of the flower cart and helping anchor it. Simple green accessories and one of the charming new subtle haneri I bought rounded things off.

The outfit feels very soft and elegant to me, stylish in a very understated sort of way that looks fantastic on a mannequin but I could probably never pull off in person! It also feels very seasonal right now, despite having more spring and summer flowers on it. The colours reflect the changing leaves outside, which makes me very happy.

Items used in this coordination