Kimono Style Edo Traditions To Modern Design

Japan’s engagement with Western clothing, culture, and art in the mid-nineteenth century transformed the traditional kimono and began a cross-cultural sartorial dialogue that continues to this day. This publication explores the kimono’s fascinating modern history and its notable influence on Western fashion. Initially signaling the wearer’s social position, marital status, age, and wealth, older kimono designs gave way to the demands of modernized and democratized twentieth-century lifestyles as well as the preferences of the emancipated “new woman.” Conversely, inspiration from the kimono’s silhouette liberated Western designers such as Paul Poiret and Madeline Vionnet from traditional European tailoring. Juxtaposing never-before-published Japanese textiles from the John C. Weber Collection with Western couture, this book places the kimono on the stage of global fashion history.

Spanning East to West, kimonos and kimono-influenced designs are everywhere, from high-end couturiers such as Yohji Yamamoto and Gucci to Main Street fashion chains such as Uniqlo and H&M. In Kimono Refashioned, contributors explore the impact of the kimono on the fashion world, charting how these striking and elegant unisex garments came to transcend their traditional Japanese design origins. Featuring highlights from the renowned Kyoto Costume Institute, this lavish volume documents Japanese and Western designs, men's and women's apparel, and both exacting and impressionistic references to the kimono. Contributors from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Newark Museum, and the Cincinnati Art Museum join curators from the Kyoto Costume Institute to reflect upon the wide-range of motifs used to decorate kimonos, the form and silhouette of the Japanese traditional dress, and how its basic two-dimensional structure and linear cut have been refashioned into a wide array of garments. As captivating as the kimono itself, this book will be a must-have for fashionistas and Asian art aficionados alike.

Kimono Design: An Introduction to Textiles and Patterns uses hundreds of photographs and a wealth of information on colors, fabrics and embellishments to paint a portrait of Japanese culture, art and thought. Lavish classical patterns, sweeping scenes, and the many motifs that have been woven, dyed, painted or embroidered into these textiles reveal a reflectiveness, a sense of humor, and an appreciation of exquisite beauty that is uniquely Japanese. Organized according to motifs traditionally associated with each season of the year, Kimono Design interprets the kimono's special language as expressed in depictions of: Flowers and grasses Birds and other animals Symbols of power, luck and prestige Land-and-seascapes scenes from literature, history and daily life scenes of travel and the Japanese concept of other lands and many others… Extensive notes on all the motifs demonstrate how the kimono reflects changing times and a sense of the timeless. Information on jewelry, hairpins and other accessories is scattered throughout to give a fuller sense of the Japanese art of dress. This is a volume that Japanophiles, historians, artists and designers will all cherish.

What is the kimono? Everyday garment? Art object? Symbol of Japan? As this book shows, the kimono has served all of these roles, its meaning changing across time and with the perspective of the wearer or viewer. Kimono: A Modern History begins by exposing the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century foundations of the modern kimono fashion industry. It explores the crossover between ‘art’ and ‘fashion’ in this period at the hands of famous Japanese painters who worked with clothing pattern books and painted directly onto garments. With Japan’s exposure to Western fashion in the nineteenth century, and Westerners’ exposure to Japanese modes of dress and design, the kimono took on new associations and came to symbolize an exotic culture and an alluring female form. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the kimono industry was sustained through government support. The line between fashion and art became blurred as kimonos produced by famous designers were collected for their beauty and displayed in museums, rather than being worn as clothing. Today, the kimono has once again taken on new dimensions, as the Internet and social media proliferate images of the kimono as a versatile garment to be integrated into a range of individual styles. Kimono: A Modern History, the inspiration for a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,not only tells the story of a distinctive garment’s ever-changing functions and image, but provides a novel perspective on Japan’s modernization and encounter with the West.

Highlights from one of the world’s most outstanding collections of traditional Japanese kimonos, with stunning examples from the Edo period through the twentieth century In traditional Japanese dress, the surface of the garment is most important. The T-shaped, straight-seamed, front-wrapping kimono has changed its shape very little over the centuries, but the weaving, dyeing, and embroidery used to decorate its surface make each a unique, wearable work of art. Choice of color and pattern vary richly to indicate gender, age, status, wealth, and taste, and are executed in a complex combination of weaving, dyeing, and embroidery techniques, with a single garment sometimes requiring the expert skills of a number of different artisans. Kimono showcases a magnificent range of kimonos from the the Khalili Collection, which comprises more than 200 garments and spans almost 300 years of Japanese textile artistry. Gorgeously illustrated and written by an international team of experts, the book surveys kimono of the imperial court, samurai aristocracy, and affluent merchant classes of the Edo period (1603–1868); the shifting styles and new color palette of Meiji period dress (1868–1912); and the bold and dazzling kimono of the Taisho (1912–26) and early Showa (1926–89) periods, when designers used innovative new techniques and fused traditional looks with inspiration from the modernist aesthetic then sweeping the world.

The first major book on Japanese textile artist Itchiku Kubota, published to accompany a touring exhibition.

"High-quality color photographs and period pictures illustrate this sumptuous volume, which should interest experts and laymen alike." --Choice The Japanese kimono is celebrated worldwide for its elegant, distinctive silhouette. Though quintessentially Japanese, the kimono form has influenced fashion designers around the globe. The 150 stunning kimonos in this beautifully illustrated book were created in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and they include formal, semi-formal, and casual kimono, haori jackets, and under-kimono (juban) worn by men, women, and children. Some of the garments reflect historical styles of design and techniques, while others illustrate a dramatic break with aspects of kimono tradition, as themes and designs from Western art began to predominate over Japanese references. The book, published to accompany a major traveling exhibition, traces the history of the kimono and illustartes the variety of colors, techniques, and designs used in creating this beautiful and symbolic garment. The kimonos featured here are drawn from the internationally renowned Montgomery Collection of Lugano, Switzerland.