Tag: tokaido

Lovely Winter Landscape

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This obi was the first piece I ever got with a Stations of the Tokaido motif, and it’s very special to me. When I was hunting for inspiration for a new coordination I looked out the window and it hit me. Everything is very snowy and wintery and monochrome here in Montreal, and I wanted to capture that feeling of cold, blustery, no-contrast weather. Ideally a pale blue-grey iromuji would probably have worked better but I don’t own one, and this one is close enough in colour. Also the heavy texture looks like windblown snow-drifts, which helped reinforce the feeling I was going for.

I chose an obiage and an obijime in an almost-identical icy mint colour to keep things very monochrome and ensure all the focus was on the obi.

As pretty as winter is, I am very ready for it to GO AWAY. I want grass and flowers and longer days, please! Is winter bad where you are? Are you also fed up with it?

Items used in this coordination

Over Hills and Mountains

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One of the best ways to bring back flagging or missing motivation is a new piece. I saw this gorgeous 53 Stations of the Tokaido obi in the extra clearance section over at Ichiroya just over a month ago. It had been marked down to $16, and I couldn’t resist. It arrived earlier this week and I knew I wanted to do something with it.

I decided to combine the soft, painted quality of the obi with a bolder, woven design on the kimono. They’re both landscapes with mountains, but the different techniques complement each other wonderfully. The obi has gorgeous, soft dusty decoration and I pulled out the sort of raspberry/burgundy colours with the accessories. A green obijime echoes the kimono, and an agate obidome in the same reddish tones was the perfect finishing touch.

To prepare for my upcoming presentations at Costume-Con 38, I also used this as an occasion to practice doing kitsuke while explaining what I was doing. My poor father was subjected to my “lecture”, and he was a good sport about it.  😛

Since this obi is so new, I don’t have proper close-up photo of it yet, but that’s coming! I need to catalogue a lot of new stuff sometime soon. It’s just a bit overwhelming.

Items used in this coordination

 

Tokaido Road for Tony Bourdain

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If you’ve been a reader for a while, you’ll know that I often make coordinations as a sort of coping mechanism when someone I admire passes on. Friday morning, I heard the news I wasn’t expecting to hear for decades yet. Tony Bourdain was dead. Devastatingly, lost to suicide. This one hit me much harder than any other recent death. I’ve been a huge fan of his for longer than I can remember. His television shows, his books, even the comic books he’s written. I’ve actually been working on a post that involves some of those, but it’s been put to the side for the time being.

In an age of approachable, inviting celebrity chefs and easily marketed sound bites, Anthony Bourdain showed us that it was important to be honest and true to yourself. He showed us that it was entirely possible to be ascerbic and foul-mouthed while being open and empathetic. He used his bad-boy persona and privileged status to amplify the voices of downtrodden people who so many would have ignored, and did it all over a shared meal.

This 53 Stations of the Tokaido obi is an item that had been on my wishlist for months, and when I got a notification that it was on sale I jumped on it. I hadn’t used it yet, waiting for the right time, and what a better way to use this motif focused on travel than to honour a man who encouraged us all to travel and explore and experience new things? I kept the rest of the outfit very subdued, to maintain the focus on the obi.

If you do anything today, do it honestly, do it with no reservations. Try something out of your comfort zone. Sit down and listen to someone you’d normally overlook. Reach out to a loved one. Eat something incredible. Do it with open eyes, open ears, open mouth, open heart, and open mind.

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

Tokai-Dos and Tokai-Don’ts

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I’ve had this 53 Stations of the Tokaido tsukesage for a long time now. I’ve never worn it myself, but I did put it on my friend Frances one day. The obi, by comparison, was an absolute impulse purchase a few weeks ago – I was buying another item from the seller and this was only $10 so I couldn’t say no! Especially since it’s a lovely stylisation of Station 49 – Saka-no-shita, which is a station I don’t have on any items in my collection yet. For the price, its absolutely gorgeous. The bulk of the design is woven in, and then touches are pulled out with beautifully lush embroidery to add depth and texture. It’s a bit slippery to tie, but definitely not the most challenging obi I’ve had to work with.

Generally the rules of kitsuke say not to match the motif on your kimono to the motif on your obi, and to contrast the colour of one against the other. However, when I saw these two pieces next to each other, my mind drifted back to my first experiment in very monochrome and matchy outfits, and I wanted to give it another shot. Rules are an excellent starting point, but sometimes breaking them with forethought and intention can produce some amazing results.

I’ve always loved the peachy pink sunset accents on the kimono and decided to make them pop with the accessories. I feel like this resulted in an overall very calm and serene outfit with a bit of punch, and I love it!

I do apologise for the quality of the photos today; my camera was being difficult so I used my mobile phone camera. It worked, but it’s not ideal. However, I make no apologies for the utterly terrible word-play in the title.

Items used in this coordination