Tag: white

Spooky Scary Skeleton Spectre

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This Skeleton Spectre tsuke-obi from Another Date Night had been calling my name for months. I finally bit the bullet and bought it with the intention of doing something for Halloween, so here we are!

I paired it with the rose motif komon I got recently, since I feel like it ties in beautifully with the roses on the obi, and as an added bonus looks a bit like spiderwebs from a distance. The haneri is actually a piece of quilting fabric I bought and I could not be happier about how perfectly they match! I just love how at first glance it looks like a nice and subdued normal outfit but when you look closer it’s a whole bundle of spooky elegance.

I hope you’re having a fantastic Halloween!

Omusubi, Onegai! (feat. Sample by Matsuda)

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I came across this omusubi zipper pouch from Sample by Matsuda on Instagram a while back and fell completely in love. Every item in the shop, referred to and catalogued as Articles, are incredibly clever and well-designed, but this one captured my heart. I knew I wanted to build an outfit around it, and red, white, and black was a no-brainer. I went for something very casual, wool kimono and hanhaba obi, and styled the pouch a bit like an inro would have been worn. Wouldn’t this be cute for someone working at a restaurant that served onigiri? I chose deep teal-ish accessories (the “obiage”  is actually a fabric drape left over from my wedding but it works!) to call back to the impossibly blackish deep green of an onigiri’s nori wrapper, and I like the unexpected colour play against the red quite a bit.

Sample by Matsuda also offers a huge variety of very cool velcro-backed embroidered patches. Since this kimono is wool the omusubi patch just stuck on the back perfectly, emulating a cartoonish, oversized kamon. It wouldn’t hold up to actual wear like this, but on the mannequin I think it was the perfect finishing touch.

The Omusubi Article itself is so incredibly well-made; the finishes are all thought out and no detail is overlooked. From the rice-like texture of the sturdy fabric to the custom engraved zipper pull and item tag, you can tell there is so much thought behind every choice made here. The patch is much simple but no less charming, but the pouch is definitely the stand-out. I will definitely be getting a ton of use out of the pouch, especially when travelling frequently between Montreal and Banning.

Is anyone else craving a jelly donut real bad?

Items used in this coordination

Bold Pop Art

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I fell in love with this komon as soon as I saw a close-up of the pattern — stylised roses made up of tiny dots. It’s got a Charles Rennie Mackintosh art & crafts meets Roy Lichtenstein pop art feel to it and I couldn’t say no. I already have several other plans in mind for her, including something for Halloween, but I knew for her debut I absolutely had to honour the pop art vibes. This piece also happens to be absolutely enormous, which gives me a lot of potential for dressing people up in the future! Who knows, I might even fit into it myself thanks to a neat new thing I’ve purchased recently. But more on that later…

Breaking up one black and white pattern with another, we have my beloved hakata tsuke obi. This is one of those pieces that always cooperates., and I’m of the mind that hakata goes with everything. Such a bold and graphic combination needed an equally vibrant accent and what better than hot pink shibori? I do kind of wish I had an obijime that was solid pink too, but part of me likes the little hint of sparkle the silver brings.

I would like to try something more calm and muted with this soon and lean entirely in the opposite direction, but for now I’m very happy with how fun and punchy this coordination is! It also ended up looking a fair bit like the visual symptoms I get when I suffer from a migraine with aura. Entirely accidental, but hilarious.

Items used in this coordination

Fit for a Party

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Just a little entry today, but I was so inspired by the Oshiroi perfume that I knew I had to make an outfit worthy of it. I knew it had to be something timeless and elegant, so using a kurotomesode was the way to go and this gorgeous hamaya piece fit the bill. It’s quite long and the design comes up very high. Also, when worn in a more standard way a lot of the design gets lost in the ohashori. This leads me to believe it was originally intended to be worn hikizuri-style, so of course I ran with it.

I went with my own twist on typical tachikata geiko-inspired styling, with a gorgeous gold obi and white and gold accessories. I even used a red obiage as a sort of momi beneath the obi, but it got a little lost. The obijime is technically too casual, but it matches the kimono so perfectly with that rich teal and almost pinkish red, I couldn’t not use it. 

Getting the mannequin to show off the beautiful perfume box was a bit of a challenge, and I’ve had to photoshop the hands slightly so if they look mangled I apologise.

Items used in this coordination

Go Habs Go!

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One thing you may not know about me is that I am descended from hockey royalty. Newsy Lalonde was my great-grandfather. While this isn’t something that generally overlaps with my kimono interests, sometimes a girl’s just got to represent hometown and familial pride, in the form of a coordination evoking the Montreal Canadiens team colours. Especially now that we’ve made it into series two of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Go Habs Go! Tricolore jusqu’au bout!*  I’d originally planned to put this up before Series 2 Game 1 on Wednesday but was feeling under the weather, so I’m making sure it goes up before Game 2.

Sadly, I don’t have any hockey-themed accessories, and I don’t think my father would be too thrilled with me using things like his grandfather’s Hockey Hall of Fame ring as an obi-kazari, so I had to work with the “tricolore” (three colours) emblematic of the Habs — red, with blue and white as accents. Our primary jersey colour is, of course, a nice bright red, and as is standard in the NHL the away jersey is white so of course this red-and-white yagasuri komon was the perfect base. I just always forget how danged huge it is, which makes putting it on the mannequin a little awkward. It also looks a bit pinker in these photos; blame the light in my room. In person it’s definitely a true red.

Sadly I don’t have any obi that are quite the right shades of blue, but this one works pretty well. I tied it in a karuta musubi because the square shape with the red and white lines of the obijime reminds me a bit of an ice rink, if you squint! There’s no significance to the cat motif, I was just going for colour cohesion. It does tie in nicely with the blues and white and the motif on the haneri though, doesn’t it?

How about you — are you a hockey fan? Are you watching the playoffs, and rooting for any particular team? If so, let me know so I can tell you how factually incorrect you are (I kid, I kid).

Items used in this coordination

*(this literally means tricolour until the end or tricolour all the way, referencing the three team colours)