Japanese Kimono

Archive for the ‘Kimono History’ Category

The furisode is characterized by long very full sleeves, for it was said at one time that a woman could win the man she loved by waving (furi) her sleeve (sode) to attract his spirit, even from afar. The furisode is, needless to say, a kimono worn only by unmarried women. 

Later there was some blurring of the distinctions between the social classes. All women began wearing a similar style of kimono. Wealth, rather than class, was the standard of distinction, and the uchikake with its elaborate patterns was no longer strictly for women of nobility. The picture below shows a woman in the uchikake robe, worn over a kosode, with a small hakoseko purse inserted between the front panels at the collar. 

 

The Obi

Attention gradually shifted in the middle of the Edo period from the kimono to the obi. Although designers were still producing creative and beautiful kosode designs, they were also looking to the obi for new possibilities in kimono fashion, for there arose a class of people, townsmen for the most part, who were not fettered by the strict samurai codes of dress and who were attracted to whatever was new and experimental.

While samurai women continued to dress in simple and restrained kimono, women outside this class, influenced by the fashionleading actors and courtesans, wore furisode kimono with large obi tied loosely in the darari-musubi style.