Tag: modern

Pride Rainbow!

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June, as you may know, is Pride month for the LGBT+ community. Here in Montreal we have a Pride festival of our own in August, but I wanted to do something for June. I don’t really own any rainbow-themed items, but I realised I could assemble a rainbow of solid-coloured pieces! My fabulous purple komon with silver lamé designs, complemented by a red haori, yellow haneri, orange obiage, green obijime and blue hanhaba obi. I love how bold and vibrant this outfit is! It would be fun to wear this to an event, but it’s all lined synthetic and incredibly hot and heavy, even just to dress the mannequin.

The finishing touch was a beaded rainbow choker I’ve had for eons. I know necklaces aren’t technically proper for kimono but this outfit is already all over the place formality-wise to suit the rainbow theme, so I just ran with it.

I do apologise for the photos, my flash batteries are close to dying and I didn’t realise how badly balanced they were until I got downstairs and started processing them. Unfortunately, it’s nearly 40 C (100+ F) in my living room right now and I can’t deal with the idea of going back upstairs and taking more photos.

The world is a scary place right now. Just know that I love you all, whatever your orientation and gender may be. Stand tall and never be ashamed of who you are inside, even if you’re in a place where being yourself openly puts you at risk.

Items used in this coordination

Kurotome & Jacket Experiment

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Last October, amazing and modern kimono stylist Akira put out Akira Times – Wafuku Anarchist, a book of his work. On the cover is a gorgeous woman in a fantastic, punk-feeling kitsuke with a leather jacket over top. Needless to say, I fell in love immediately. I knew I wanted to try something similar, but somehow never got around to it.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was reminded by Nichole Fiorentino, who also does some utterly gorgeous and aspirational kimono styling, when she posted older photos of her doing a similar kitsuke with holographic accessories and a holographic leather jacket. I knew the time had come for me to do a kurotme & jacket experiment of my own!

Amusingly enough, the jacket itself came from another dear friend named Nicole, and it’s one of my favourite things in my wardrobe. I knew I wanted to use it, instead of a plain black one, so I chose this vintage kurotome because of the similarities in colour accents, and the flower motifs. I figured since I was already doing something “wrong” I could just throw caution to the wind and have a little fun. I pulled out some really bold accessories, and went with the narrow band of my hakata tsuke-obi since the back would be hidden anyway, and it helped to reduce bulk under the jacket.

While I can’t say whether or not I’d ever be confident enough to wear something like this out in public, I do think the experiment was ultimately very successful and I’m glad I did it!

Items used in this coordination

(and one epic jacket!)

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.