Tag: modern

A Work of Art

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Some months back, someone on Reddit posted about an amazing vintage poster they’d found at a thrift shop of a woman in a traditional woodblock-print style holding a fan made of colour swatches. The only info on it was the name of a printing company, and she was dubbed the Pantone Geisha. And of course, as someone with a graphic design background and a borderline-unhealthy special interest in Japanese art, I fell completely in love.

I spent eons trying to track down the poster,  or find some sort of accreditation other than the facility where it was printed, so I could buy a copy but to no avail.

So I gave in, decided to use that damn graphic design background, and make my own take on her and her delightful palette fan. With the support and encouragement of my friends, I worked on pushing the “arts” aspect even further by turning her mimikaki kanzashi into paintbrushes, making her kimono have a blueprint inspiration, and possibly the easiest to miss but my favourite detail, turning a fibonacci circle into another hair ornament. A bit of a watercolour splash in the background, and the portrait was done!

Since this is inspired by extant, unaccredited art, I don’t feel comfortable selling prints, but if you would like to print a copy of your own, you can get a high-resolution copy right here. And if you do, you can always consider supporting me in other ways, if you’d like.

Modern Valentine

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Pink, orange, and black may not be the most expected Valentine’s Day combination, but this is what happens when I’m thousands of miles away from my husband on a day to celebrate love, I guess. No, I kid! I was actually inspired by the incredible modern styling of aedam_furisode on Instagram to pull out a ruffled juban and a big loud furisode. Since the only ruffled juban I own is black, the rest of the outfit had to be built around that. I brought out this bright salmon-pink gosho-guruma (royal cart) furisode, since I knew it had some stark black outlines on it, and then grabbed my trusty orange hakata chuuya obi because it matches the peonies on this kimono so well. If I’m being honest, any excuse to use this obi is a good one.

To break up the tonal similarities of the salmon kimono and orange obi, as well as reinforce the non-traditional vibe and aedam style, I used black cotton lace as a sort of obiage and shigoki-obi, as well as running it through the obi-musubi. It also makes the black ruffles feel more cohesive I think, and brings more attention to the stark black outline of the gosho-guruma motif on the kimono. Without the lace I think this would have just felt confusing and the exposed juban more like an afterthought or an accident, but with the punches of black accessories it pulls everything together. A black obijime tied in a modified kokoro-musubi was the final touch. It’s too short to do a normal one, but if you’re looking for instructions I made a tutorial years ago which you can find here.

Are you doing anything special for valentine’s day? Since I’m so far from Keith, I’m going out for bbq chicken with my folks later tonight. Ahhh, middle age. So romantic. But hey, at least I don’t have to buy him honmei-choco this year!

 

Autumn Fairy Tale

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Both this kimono and this obi are nearly impossible to coordinate. I’ve used the kimono before, but despite having had this obi in my possession for nearly a year now, I’d never found a good way to use it. Last night it came to me while I was soaking in the bath, as many great ideas do.

They both have a sort of fantastical, storybook, decidedly un-Japanese vibe to them. The kimono has always reminded me of The Moomins and other Scandinavian childrens’ books, and the obi has a vaguely Middle-Eastern fantasy feel to it that wouldn’t be out of place in One Thousand and One Nights. I also thought the green and brown would complement each other very well, and the gold accents would echo each other nicely too.

Was I right, or was I right? I’m over the moon with how these pieces look together. I decided go with pink accessories to make the pink trees in the kimono stand out a bit more, since they can get a bit lost against the white hill. They also help to add a touch of light and contrast between the kimono and obi, which are both quite dark. It worked very well, I think. From a distance they almost read as white, just like the trees do, but when you get close you get this lovely surprise. There are also tiny pink and gold botan on the haneri, which are decidedly out of season but the colours worked so well I had to run with it. Next time I might add a gold date-eri to break things up a little further, but I think it works fine without it too. It also just occurred to me that my pink lace haori would look amazing with this too, so I will have to try that sometime.

Another neat thing about this outfit is that all the items aside from the obijime are significantly larger than average, which means I might be able to wear it if I ever have the energy to dress myself again. Something to look forward to, maybe?

Items used in this coordination

Chic Modern Kiku

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I found this piece on eBay when it had less than an hour to go, and I just fell head over heels. I love how bold it is, how minimalistic it is despite the motif itself being huge and dramatic, I love the very simple colour palette. And of course, rangiku is one of my favourite motifs. I really lucked out here, someone actually bumped it up to my maximum bid in the last few seconds, but didn’t bid any higher so I ended up winning it by the skin of my teeth.

I was so eager to coordinate it that I haven’t even had time to take a photograph for my catalogue – I just wanted to get it on to the mannequin as soon as I had some free time.

I paired it with a mofuku nagoya obi, since I really wanted the punch of black contrast. I think the rest of the outfit is obviously enough not mofuku that I can get away with it. Ideally, I would have used accessories in the same blue as the accents on the flowers, but I don’t own anything in that specifically “blurple” colour. I went with some of my favourite blue pieces, my icy blue obiage and beaded obijime. The haneri is actually my silver spiderweb one turned inside out. That made me chuckle a bit, since in English rangiku are often referred to as spider chrysanthemums. Maybe one day I’ll coordinate it with the webs visible.

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