About
A Kimono Dress is a website about Japanese fashion. The title of the blog comes from an interesting piece of fashion out in the world today that is a modern dress, but with stylistic elements that were clearly affected by the traditional kimono. I have had an interest in Japanese culture for awhile and the more I learn about Japanese fashion the more interested I get in it as well.
I’m going to start things off by writing about the history of the kimono dress and the traditional style from which it has come from. From there I will begin to look at some other Japanese fashion and the traditional styles or aspects of the culture that they are coming from. Just because it is one of the other aspects I know about, I might go first into the extreme styles found particularly in certain parts of Tokyo. The time and attention given to these are pretty amazing. It seems as if each one has developed out of a specific personality type, manifested in a physical way.
On this post I’ll start things off with a little history of where the kimono came from and which aspects of it you might see on kimono dresses. The original kimono have roots back to more than one thousand years ago in Japan and were actually influenced by Chinese clothing of the time. The kimono has changed and developed in many ways over the years, but in current times still has several consistent elements: a T-shaped design, wide sleeves, and a belt called an obi.
Outside of when the dead are being prepared for burial, kimono are always worn with the left side wrapped over the right (as a side note on the morbid subject of preparing the dead for a burial, a wonderful movie about this called Departures recently won the Academy Award for best foreign film; I might have a slightly off topic post on this movie because it is one of my favorite in recent memory). After the kimono is wrapped around the body, the obi is wrapped around the waste and tied in the back with a bow. It is very common to see traditional wooden sandals called geta worn with kimono and paired with split toe socks called tabi.
The differences found between a kimono and a Japanese kimono dress are pretty clear, but it is interesting to see the modern take on this style. The main similarity is probably with the wide, flowing sleeves. In addition, the dresses have what appears to be an obi, but one that is not tied in the back as with a traditional kimono. Also, although the kimono dresses are not wrapped around the body like the traditional garment, they have a similar distinctive flowing characteristic that definitely brings a kimono to mind. This seems like a good place to stop with this post, but I hope you enjoy reading more about kimonos, kimono style dresses, and many other types of Japanese fashion that I will be posting about soon.
Photo Source: tanakawho