Contemporary Yellow Kimono

I have written much about my working with traditional Japanese patterns and deconstructed kimonos, a search that has taken many hours of my retirement–a joyous search, I might add, because I have always been fascinated with the Japanese aesthetic. I can probably trace that passion back to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and one of the finest collections I know of Japanese art and design. Mass Art was just a stone’s throw away and the teachers there were fond of using the Museum’s collection as source material for assignments. I can even remember a fabric design–probably my first–using the ubiquitous stylized waves of Japanese art. So I was excited that a major exhibition of “Kosode: Haute Coutoure Kimonos of the Edo Period“  would be at the Suntory Museum in Tokyo when we were there. While we were in Kyoto, we had visited the textile museum and arrived in time to see a fashion show of contemporary kimonos which, while pretty, were less than awe-inspiring. Most of the kimonos sold on Ichiroya‘s web site–and certainly many of those I had bought in order to deconstruct them–were far more compelling. Continue reading →