Celebrating the kimono

BY SHARON SCHLEGEL
Special to the Times

The kimono, a fashion classic with a fascinating history, is very much alive.
Right now, fashion-minded shoppers can find "kimono-sleeved" blouses on sale, a hot spring item, while lingerie designers consider the short, kimono-style wrap robe a staple of intimate apparel.

But an up-close look at the beauty of the traditional floor-length kimono, which emerged in Japan in the eighth century as both an all-purpose everyday garment and a robe for special occasions, is a lot harder to come by.

Through July 20, 85 original and breath-taking kimono (the plural is the same as the singular) are on display, in all their brilliance of color and riotous range of pattern, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's new Perelman Building. The exhibit, "Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan," has been brought to U.S. shores for the first time by Swiss collector Jeffrey Montgomery. It dates from the early to mid-20th century, when the kimono was at its height of its creative design, its patterns heavily influenced by Europe's budding Art Deco and Art Nouveau movements.

Included are a wide range of artfully woven and hand-painted silks: from watercolor-like Japanese pastoral scenes, which typically include cranes and bamboo, to oversize florals, abstract patterns and bold geometrics, which jump out at you like 1960s Op Art.

The unusual color combinations and freedom of design are stunning. One typically fanciful stylized floral pattern pits orange and pink rose-like flowers, set inside gold six-pointed stars, against a background of magenta. A 1910 stencil-printed silk weave boasts enormous white and yellow camellias, with long, languorous green or blue leaves, all set against a brilliant red.
A 1930s example looks like intertwined strands of DNA: mingled vertical lines of yellow, red and white, in bold contrast to a black background. The pattern seems totally contemporary, but was actually influenced by European Cubist art of the time.

As the exhibit's title indicates, the explosion of interest in what European artists and designers in the early to mid-20th century called "Orientalism" was matched by the strong influence of European Art Deco and Modernism on Japanese kimono patterns.

Also not to be missed are nine rare men's kimono, with a whole different dynamic. These are each of solemn black silk -- on the outside. But they are propped open to reveal linings covered with calligraphy or gorgeously hand-illustrated scenes: battlefield encounters, processions of feudal lords, boats passing under Mount Fuji.

The idea, explains Kristina Hoagland, the exhibit's curator and the museum's associate curator of textile and design, was to modestly "hide your extravagance" by placing the intricately inked adornment out of sight, inside the kimono.

Japanese sumptuary laws frowning on public display of wealth, she says, encouraged the idea of hidden beauty in male apparel. Hoagland compares the custom to the wearing of designer labels on the inside, as they used to be through the 1950s, lending pride to the owner and his "in the know" class of friends alone.

Montgomery, who gathered the collection over 30 years, recently described his first glimpse of them, at the exhibit's press opening.

"I felt an extraordinary energy, and a relation to both Art Nouveau and Art Deco in many of them. I'm still taken by their beauty, but when I first found them, they were being discarded."
That was the result of changing values after World War II. Prior to that, the kimono was proudly seen as Japan's national costume. After the war, when Japan sought to Westernize, the kimono was no longer welcome. Thousands of kimono were tossed away or burned. The era of the "living" kimono, when the garb was worn routinely, ended.

Yet the kimono's international fashion influence did not. It had started as early as 1910, when French fashion pioneer Paul Poiret helped bring women out of stiff-boned corsets and into softer silhouettes, using wide, loose sleeves, and cocoonlike wrap coats, clearly kimono-inspired. Although the kimono remained in post-war use in Japan for ceremonial occasions alone, at the turn of the 21st century, a new generation of Japanese women rediscovered it. Today, women in their 20s and 30s in Japan are sometimes seen sporting a kimono at graduation ceremonies, or even wearing them as coats.

Meanwhile, a growing interest in vintage kimono has helped unearth precious originals long packed away and preserved.

This gorgeous exhibit shows clearly that while today's high-speed world may be a recent phenomenon, the interplay of cultural influence between nations is hardly brand new.

http://www.nj.com/living/times/index.ssf?/base/living-1/1211861141253740.xml&coll=5

Hello! Fashion: Kansai Yamamoto, 1971 to 1973 at The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Flying Saucer Dress, Spring/summer 1994, (Designed by Issey Miyake, Japanese, born 1938). Polyester plain weave, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Issey Miyake.

PHILADELPHIA.- Kansai Yamamoto (born 1944), one of the founding fathers of Japanese contemporary fashion, is best known for his work of the 1970s and 1980s. Inspired by the colorful art of Japan’s Momoyama period (1568–1615) and traditional Kabuki theater, his exuberant designs contrast with the Zen-like simplicity and deconstructed silhouettes favored today by designers such as Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, and Issey Miyake.

Kansai opened his first boutique in Tokyo in 1968 and eventually expanded worldwide. His collections debuted in the United States in 1971 at Hess’s in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a department store known for its controversial fashion shows of American and European styles selected for their potential to influence ready-to-wear clothing designs. (Rudy Gernreich’s topless bathing suit was first modeled at Hess’s in 1964.) That same year Kansai became the first Japanese designer to show in London, where his clothing was seen by musician David Bowie; Bowie later commissioned Kansai to create the wardrobe for his Ziggy Stardust stage persona. The designer was again featured in Hess’s showing of Asian trendsetting fashions for fall/winter 1973 at One World Trade Center in New York. All of the Kansai ensembles on view in this gallery were modeled at the New York event; several were shown earlier in London.

Since his last collection for fall/winter 1992, Kansai has lent his name to licensed products ranging from eyeglasses to tableware. His fashion show spectaculars have become the framework for the grand Kansai Super Shows, the first of which was held in Moscow’s Red Square in 1993. Others held since in Japan, Vietnam, India, and Berlin have drawn audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

Kansai recently returned to fashion as a designer of traditional Japanese garments in a contemporary idiom including kimono (2004) and Hanten festival–inspired coats (2007). He continues to produce Super Shows as part of a larger initiative to invigorate the arts in Japan and serves as a government advisor on tourism and cultural affairs.

http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=24363

Unique 'Degas and the Art of Japan' Exhibition in Final Month at Reading Public Museum

READING, Pa., Nov. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The works of Edgar Degas were deeply influenced by Japanese art, yet surprisingly, there has never been an exhibition devoted to this subject...until now. Degas and the Art of Japan at the Reading Public Museum, on display now through Sunday, December 30, 2007, is the first exhibition of its kind to bring together a variety of works by Degas with an illuminating selection of Japanese objects, including a work actually owned by Degas and many images he knew and admired. Displayed side-by-side with the art of the famous Impressionist, these dynamic scenes of Japanese life are revealed as the inspiration for many of Degas' most inventive pictures of dancers, cabaret singers, laundresses and the French countryside.

This unique exhibition of over 60 works, organized by the Reading Public Museum, includes works by Degas borrowed from museums and private collections in the United States, Canada and Europe -- as well as three extraordinary pictures by Degas belonging to the Reading Public Museum's permanent collection. The Degas works are complemented by Japanese objects from major national institutions, as well as from the Museum's own extensive collection.

As the exhibition progresses, Degas' debt to Japanese art comes alive in portraits, pictures of women bathing and combing their hair, scenes of theater-goers and ladies of leisure, and in fans... one decorated by the artist himself. Previously unidentified links between Degas' pictures of laundresses and their Ukiyo-e prototypes are brought to light, as will other little-known aspects of the French artist's sustained engagement with the art of Japan.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated color catalogue written by exhibition curators Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall, who also organized the groundbreaking exhibition Degas and the Dance in 2002-3 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This exhibition is underwritten by the Marlin and Ginger Miller Exhibition Endowment and Sovereign Bank. Additional grants have been made by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Jerlyn Foundation, Yuasa Battery, Inc., and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

The Reading Public Museum is located at 500 Museum Road, Reading, PA. Web: http://www.readingpublicmuseum.org/.
READING PUBLIC MUSEUM

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,229696.shtml