Tag: modern

Art Gallery – Six Modern Bijin Artists You Should Follow

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Bijin-ga (美人画) literally means “picture of beautiful person”. They originate in the woodblock prints of the Edo era, and typically depicted beautiful women from various walks of life – from everyday women doing everyday things to famous courtesans reclining in luxurious surroundings. Many famous artists produced bijin-ga prints; some of the most well-known being Utagawa Kunisada, Kitagawa Utamaro, and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

Around the transitional period from late Meiji through Taisho into early Showa era, artists such as Jun’ichi Nakahara, Yumeji Takehisa, and Katsuji Matsumoto‘s modern styles made an enormous impact on traditional bijin-ga and produced works that helped form the flowery, large-eyed shoujo manga aesthetic as we know it.

With the advent of more modern printing technologies and digital painting, art has become more accessible than ever before. There are incredible modern artists out there today producing breathtaking works that continue to challenge the way we think of traditional Japanese art of gorgeous women. These are the sorts of artists I’m going to focus on. I urge you to check out their galleries, follow them on social media, and buy their prints to support them if you can.

While these featured artists are all incredibly versatile and do portraits of women in kimono and modern clothes as well as floral studies and still-lifes, I chose to focus on kimono-clad beauties to keep with the spirit of bijin-ga.

This entry will be long and image-heavy, so please click through to keep reading! Continue reading

#MonoKimono Challenge – Cool Blue

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It’s the last weekend of the month, and you know what that means! It’s #monokimono weekend, and for this one I decided to go blue to suit the rainy mood outside. I also knew I had to go with something easy, so a poly komon and hanhaba obi fit the bill. If you’re not a fan of Kimono Tsuki on Facebook you won’t have seen my post, but Friday afternoon I lost an argument with the staircase at work and came out of it a little worse for wear. I’ve got a mild concussion, a sprained knee, and two cuts across my forehead that required surgical glue and a tetanus shot. That’s not counting all the varied aches, pains, and bruises scattered all over the rest of my body. Because of this, I knew I had no energy to wrestle with a bigger obi or a more fussy or fragile kimono. I didn’t want to skip this month completely, so I found the solution with these easy, modern blue pieces.

Initially, the outfit looked a bit too dark and heavy, and the obi wasn’t really jiving. Thankfully, using my blue cotton striped haneri in place of a kasane-eri helped lighten things up around the top. The kimono is also very big; I’d forgotten how big, so getting it onto the mannequin was a bit more fuss than I’d hoped for. But I think I made it work. This certainly isn’t the tidiest or best kitsuke I’ve done recently, but I’m proud of myself for managing to get something out despite my battered state!

I’ve also just noticed this outfit bears more than a passing resemblance to my little kimmidoll mascot over there on the sidebar. That was entirely accidental but it pleases me greatly.

Items used in this coordination

Hotel Lobby Ikebana

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This is what I tend to think of as Hotel Lobby Ikebana. It’s big, bold, tropical, and symmetrical, and it wouldn’t feel out of place as you’re checking in to a nice resort. This isn’t a bad thing at all, it’s just where my mind immediately goes when I see this sort of arrangement.

For this one, I challenged myself to work from a pre-assembled bouquet from the drugstore, of all things. Who knew you could get ginger flowers in that sort of a place? I love how sculptural and bright they are, and thought this red vase I found at the thrift store would balance them nicely.

I tried to keep the balance and framing I learnt about in last month’s ikebana atelier in mind while I put this together, but still kept it more modern and free-form. I liked the idea of symmetry and like how the end result has a pleasant fan shape that also adds to the formal and dramatic feel of it.

I can’t wait for the weather to start getting nicer so I can go back to using seasonal flowers from the garden and great outdoors, but for now I’m just glad I have access to interesting plant material.

Pretty Pastel Princess

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I’ve been behind on mannequin coordinations lately! Hopefully this pretty pastel princess outfit will make up for it. I’ve wanted to do something sweet and girly with this furisode since I used it for Cinderella, and I finally decided to stop procrastinating and just do it.

I really wanted to play up the pink accents in the kimono, so I chose pink accessories and a silvery white obi with pink details and everything ties together so nicely. Despite all the pieces being relatively flashy and youthful-feeling, somehow the coordination still feels gentle. I’m not sure how I feel about the choice of obijime, since the blue doesn’t quite match the kimono, but I’ve been wanting to use this beaded one since I got it and couldn’t resist.

Since this was a dressy furisode outfit, I used the opportunity to practice my fukura suzume (chubby sparrow) musubi. I really do need to branch out and work on more interesting musubi in general, and I am going to try to make a habit of it in the future.

Overall, this coordination came together pretty much exactly how I’d been imagining it in my head and that makes me really happy. And while it’s certainly not as big as my new modern komon, this kimono nearly fits me properly so one day I’ll have to put this outfit on myself. Since the kiku is my birth month flower, maybe I’ll wear it for my birthday when next November rolls around.

Items used in this coordination

A Wild Diane Appears!

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You guys! Look at this! Recently a friend drew my attention to the fact that Kimonomachi shop on Rakuten now carries a selection of modern poly komon in size 4TL. Even when I was thinner, it was nigh-impossible for me to find kimono that were actually long enough for me. Now that I’m also significantly overweight, I’d pretty much given up wearing a kimono comfortably as a lost cause, but this one borders on being too big for me. Isn’t that wild?

Sadly, I only noticed my obiage had slipped off my makura after I took the photos. Oops!

It feels so good to be able to dress myself again, and so easily and comfortably too. It’s amazing how much of a difference the proper fit makes. I’d love to buy myself another one, but these kimono are not inexpensive at ¥ 14,000. I managed to get this one for significantly less because I had Rakuten points a PayPal gift card that needed to be used. I may cave in and buy myself a different pattern if I get a large tax return this year. We’ll see.

For reference, I am 179cm (5’10”) tall with a 121cm (48″) bust and a 36K bra, a 91cm (36″) natural waist, and 120cm (47″) hips. I typically wear a size 18 or 1X in North American clothing sizes. This kimono wraps easily from hip to hip, a full one and a half times my widest measurement. So if you’re a similar size and looking for something that will actually fit you properly, I cannot suggest these enough!

I paired the kimono with this moorish arch nagoya obi that couldn’t match better if I’d bought them together. The rusty orange-red of the obi makes the red accents in the kimono pop, and the turquoise base colour of the obi is the exact same as the arches. Looking at the photos, it’s quite clear that a standard otaiko musubi done with an average-sized nagoya obi just looks disproportionately small and odd on my frame, so whenever I actually wear this kimono out to an event I will likely go with a hanhaba or chuuya obi tied in something I can control the size of better. Vibrant lemon yellow accessories made everything pop, and I couldn’t resist using my obidome with snails on it. It’s too cute for words, and ties in with the warm creme colour on the flowers of the kimono.

As a final note, a little reminder that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I dressed myself in this outfit last Thursday and took photos, with the intention of posting it on Fudangi Friday. I transferred, edited, and uploaded the photos. And then on Friday morning I settled in at work, and during a quiet moment started drafting the entry. It was at that point I realised I had the kimono on backwards. Somehow I’d managed to dress myself and then take and edit photos without ever noticing! And as much as I encourage playing with rules when it comes to kimono, wrapping it backwards (right side over top of the left) is only ever done for a body being prepared for a funeral, and it is not a rule I would ever consider breaking unless it was for a very explicit purpose like a costume. So I scrapped my initial plan and re-dressed myself today. Honestly, I’m glad I did, because I managed to tie the obi much more neatly and the lighting was a lot better as well.

Items used in this coordination