Kimono History and Its Influence on Contemporary Fashion Design

Introduction: The Kimono as Cultural Icon

The kimono has become one of the most notable and recognizable elements of Japanese culture. If we were to name the defining characteristics of Japanese civilization, the kimono would most certainly be among them. Although Japanese people today dress almost uniformly in Western style, the kimono has remained not only a tradition but a way of life in many parts of the country — a means of venerating aesthetics. Thus, although the kimono has nearly disappeared from daily wear, its pervading influence on contemporary worldwide fashion remains clearly recognizable.

Origins and Construction of the Kimono

The kimono appeared relatively late in Japanese history, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, derived from the traditional multilayered dress called the kosode. As this multilayered garment was very encumbering for the wearer and suited only to a very sedentary way of life, the kimono emerged in its place at the end of the Edo period. When it came into use, the kimono offered an alternative to yofuku, or Western clothing, which had already been adopted in Japan to some extent by the end of the nineteenth century.

The term "kimono" means simply "things to wear," but its history and artistic designs contradict this unassuming phrase. Despite the simple tailoring and straight lines of the cut, the kimono is a highly sophisticated garment precisely because it invites the use of complex, artistic decoration. In terms of shape, the traditional kimono is made only of rectangular pieces of cloth assembled together, and it can be adjusted in length according to the wearer's body. The tailoring for women's and men's kimonos is almost identical; the primary difference lies in the sleeves, which are square for men and more rounded for women. Kimonos are usually made of silk, though other fabrics — such as crepe, spun silk, and silk gauze — may also be used.

Artistic Design, Symbolism, and Social Meaning

What is truly spectacular about the traditional kimono is the intricate, artistic design that embellishes the cloth. The designs are either dyed, painted, or worked as embroidery. Textile design represents an art form in its own right within Japanese culture. The design was first a tribute to aesthetics, but also a form of cultural expression: through specific color and pattern, the kimono situated the wearer within a recognizable social category, indicating marital status and social rank, among other things.

The designs drew on religious motifs, on important literary works such as The Tale of Genji and The Tales of Ise, and on folkloric pieces such as Momotarō (the Peach Boy) and Oni no Nembutsu (the Devil's Prayer) (Cort, 1973, 122). Other themes for embroidery and design included symbolic animal imagery — such as the turtle — as well as natural phenomena and plants. Geometric textile patterns included, for example, the diamond pattern, the tatewaku pattern ("parallel undulating lines arranged regularly along the warp of the textile so that adjacent lines define oval lozenges"), the karakusa pattern (scrolling vine), and the ishi-datami pattern (paving stone), among many others (Cort, 1973, 125–128). In short, the plain cut of the kimono, which conceals the human body, serves as a true repository of abstract philosophy and art.

The Kimono's Influence on Western Fashion

The kimono is at once a very simple garment in terms of shape and a very complex one in terms of design and artistry. Contemporary fashion has been significantly influenced by the traditional Japanese dress, both in its obvious borrowings from Japanese style and in more subtle features. During the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Japanese were first exposed to the influence of the West (Orzada). At roughly the same time, the West also discovered the distinctive qualities of Japanese design and began to be fascinated with Oriental art and aesthetics.

As Richard Martin observes, the kimono influenced Western designers from the 1960s onward, even in the least obvious forms — for example, in the loose garments that no longer fit tightly to the body. Generally, Western culture had been inclined to respect the form of the human body and to adjust the dress to it. Ornaments that embellished the dress were usually in the form of jewelry or fringes. The most sumptuous dresses of the Renaissance, for instance, were rich in material and shape but were always adjusted to the human body so as to reveal, at least in part, its contours. Tailoring traditionally obstructs and compels the pattern of the cloth; the Japanese influence thus offered an alternative to Western tailored garments that privileged the form of the body — a tendency toward abstraction, toward design and artistic embroidery.

As Martin argues, the impact of the Japanese kimono on Western fashion should not be underestimated. Contemporary designers focus far more on the abstract function of dress than they once did: "It is impossible to describe and analyze late twentieth-century fashion in Europe and America without taking account of the substantive contribution of Japanese design. In this, I describe no phase of exoticism, but a change in fashion at its matrix and the resonant changes of fashion in its system in which the West is now ever changed by the presence of Japanese fashion and its ethos. The 'kimono mind' is our contemporary perspective on fashion worldwide." (Martin, 1995, 215) Martin proposes a special term to describe the main characteristics of fashion today — the "kimono mind" — arguing that the very basic mode of thought in fashion has been modified under Japanese influence.

The most important aspects modified in contemporary fashion are, on the one hand, the loose form of garments that resembles the kimono and does not trace the form of the body, and on the other, the tendency toward swaddling the body rather than fitting it: "…the body carries the garment organically, but that the garment may secure its own expression beyond that which is merely the body's double or interpreted silhouette. Of course, the propensity to wrapping in place of the tailored definition of the body is one that has profound ramifications for contemporary dress, promoting both oversizing as a model and a virtual one-size-fits-all aptitude heretofore unknown in high-style Western dress. Cloaking and swaddling the body is a manner that builds outward." (Martin, 1995, 219)

Conclusion: The Kimono Mind in Contemporary Design

It can be seen that the traditional kimono still plays a very important part in contemporary fashion — not as an exotic element, but as an integral part of designs for both casual and evening wear. The "kimono mind," as Martin has described it, represents a fundamental and lasting shift in how the fashion world conceives of the relationship between garment, body, and artistic expression.

Works Cited

Cort, Louise Allison and Saburō Mizoguchi. Design Motifs. Weatherhill, 1973.

Kawamura, Yuniya. The Japanese Revolution in Paris Fashion. Oxford: Berg, 2004.

Martin, Richard. "Our Kimono Mind: Reflections on 'Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950.'" Journal of Design History. Vol. 8(3), 1995. 215–224.

Orzada, Belinda T. Traditional Japanese Dress.

Simon, Joan. "Miyake Modern — Japanese designer Issey Miyake — Interview." Art in America. 1999.