Life, the Universe and Everything

This is one of those coordinations I’ve wanted to do from the very moment I got this kimono, and have just been putting off for one reason or another for years. It was high time I fixed that! This past Thursday was my 42nd birthday, and this coordinate has auspicious motifs of hayama and kagami (arrows and mirrors) and my favourite colour (teal) so I decided it was finally time to do it.

This kimono is definitely interesting – it’s brighter and more bold than most kurotomesode of the era, and it’s definitely very long for its age. The hem has a slight roll to it, so it’s a bit heavier than the rest of the fabric. This, along with the length, lead me to suspect it was a hikizuri, meant to be worn trailing. I’d like to think it may have been a geisha’s piece, worn at the new year, but this is just a suspicion of mine and I have no way to verify it. Whatever it is, I absolutely love it and should coordinate it more often.

The cool afternoon lighting in my living room makes the teal look bluer in these photos, but it definitely sits right between green and blue in person. I decided to use reds and blues in the accessories to emphasize how bold and punchy this piece is, and to sort of reinforce the geisha-adjacent feel of it. I also decided to let it drape, hikizuri style, to show off the beautiful flow of it, and tied the obi wider than normal to match. The collars are a bit wonky, but sometimes I just cannot get them to cooperate due to the shape of the mannequin. Alas.

This birthday has been a good one and I have very upbeat feelings about this coming loop around the sun. I hope I can share lots of new content and great news with you all soon!

Items used in this coordination

Delightful dolls, delayed

Hina-matsuri (雛祭り, doll’s day) was this past Thursday. In the past, I’ve made my own dolls for display but this year I just didn’t have the time to do much of anything, since I work all week now. However, I did want to do a little something, even if it’s technically too late.

I knew I wanted to use this ningyo obi, despite the type of doll not being the typical dolls used for this festival. One day I will find a piece with proper hina dolls on it and I will use that, but until that happens this is what I’ve got.

This kimono may have seemed like an odd choice, but if you look closely there’s bright red accents in the beautiful embroidery. They actually coordinate quite well, I think. Also I think the pink, pastels, and adorable bunny are all ideal for a holiday that celebrates girls.

It’s been a long time since I’ve used my beloved blue and red shibori obiage or my mint and reddish-orange obijime so I was thrilled to have an excuse to pull them out again. A pretty floral haneri in shades of pink with turquoise foliage was a nice finishing touch. As well as featuring dolls, this outfit feels like a great bridge from winter to spring, perfect for early March.

This Outfit has a Secret

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

What’s Old is New Again

This kimono has always been one of my favourites, but for some reason I’ve never paired it with anything other than an orange obi. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great with orange, but I wanted to diversify a bit. I realised it had the same kikkou pattern on the shoulder as my green darari-style tsuke-obi and I knew exactly where this coordination was heading.

Red accessories because there’s a bit of red in the obi and it helps make the lining pop, and red accents always make an outfit feel a bit more vintage to me! I debated using a dark red haneri shigoki obi as well but it ended up feeling more balanced without it. Even if you’ve planned an outfit entirely in your head, it’s always good to be flexible when you finally get things laid out together. Never feel like you have to stick entirely to your original plans, and that doesn’t only go for kimono coordinating.

Items used in this coordination

Touches of Gold

(There’s some personal emotional garbage as well as an attempt at explaining the lack of content lately at the bottom of this entry. Feel free to skip it if you’re just here for the pretties.)

My lovely friend Maral was helping someone destash some kimono and I fell in love with this green odori piece as well as a gorgeous purple and white obi that will make an appearance sooner or later. Everything about this piece makes me happy; the colour, the bridge, the willow branches, and the size. It’s deceptively large!

I decided I really wanted to play up the warm orange and touches of gold in the kimono. I used my black shishi obi to help anchor the coordination and bring in even more metallic accents, and the red obiage to tie in the red date-eri that was already sewn into the kimono. My initial instinct was a white and gold haneri but I defaulted to this yellow chirimen one that I use way too often, because somehow despite being the colour of stale mustard it seems to go with almost everything.

This outfit is quite straightforward compared to a lot of what I’ve been doing lately, but there’s a lot to be said for the classics. The whole coordination feels balanced, and just flashy enough. It’s also sort of accidentally Christmas colours, which works well because it’ll be on the mannequin over the holidays. It wasn’t intentional, but let’s pretend it was.

Items used in this coordination

If you’re reading this far, thank you. The past month or so has been rough, you guys. I was supposed to spend my birthday (Nov 16) and American Thanksgiving with my dude but then my household got exposed to the virus that shall not be named and we all had to quarantine for two weeks. As we were dealing with the aftermath of that, we lost my grandmother. She’d been ill for quite a long time and it’s a relief to know she’s not suffering anymore, but considering I was going through some emotionally messy garbage before all this happened, you can imagine how I was feeling afterwards. However, we’ve buried my grandmother’s ashes and she’s at peace, and barring another exposure incident I will be spending Christmas with Keith so I’m starting to feel better finally. I should have much more new content and a more regular update schedule in the new year. 💕