Paris show traces kimono from prim tradition to glam fashion
Kimono by top fashion designers Jean Paul Gaultier, John Galliano, Junko Koshino, Kenzo Takada and Franck Sorbier take centre stage at Paris’s Guimet museum
While the once ubiquitous garment is now reserved for special occasions and official events in its homeland, it has inspired the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier and Dior’s John Galliano in the West’s fashion capitals.
Around 150 styles from the collection of Matsuzakaya – the centuries-old Japanese fashion house that became a department store – are on display abroad for the first time in the Guimet’s show, titled “Kimono, The Ladies’ Delight”.
Variations of the kimono first caught on in the West as part of a general fad for all things Japanese in the late 19th century when bourgeois ladies began wearing a casual version – without the restraining obi belt – around the house.
Then Parisian couturiers Paul Poiret and Madeleine Vionnet began experimenting with the kimono in the 1920s.
Fast forward to Japanese-French designer Kenzo Takada, two of whose creations dating from 2006 are in featured in the exhibit.
“It’s thanks to the kimono that I found my identity,” said Takada, the 77-year-old founder of the Kenzo luxury fashion house.
“When I opened my boutique (in Paris) in 1970, I told myself, I’m Japanese, I probably know kimonos and Japanese traditions better than French designers and I should take advantage of that,” Takada recalled.