sooooooo

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

sooooooo

I found out the kimono I use as an accessory in my silly opera videos is 100 years old, and the "gold colored embroidery" is actually literally gold

lol

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

the sad thing is that it's not even weird that I was able to acquire it on the cheap from a used kimono store in Japan. used kimono stores are flooded with these things because there is no occasion in modern day in which it is appropriate to wear them so when old people die the kids don't want 'em so they get sold to go live in a used kimono shop drawer until some foreigner buys it cuz it looks pretty

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

so it is both a priceless irreplaceable artifact to me and also so common in Japan nobody knows how to get rid of all these things

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

why it's worthless in Japan: the black says "this is serious business" but the bright orange on the shoulder says "it's party time!!!"

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

ironically, the very thing that makes it worthless (it having a combination of symbols that later became culturally "illegal") is what made it so striking and beautiful to me when I saw it in an unlabeled drawer in a used kimono shop in tokyo

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

this orchid is not native to Japan but the artistic motif is entirely Japanese. This motif of a non-native flower was popular in Japanese art deco to signify refined cosmopolitan taste. some non-foreign foreignness to spice things up

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

i guess to make an analogy, imagine you inherited like, a purple velvet tuxedo from your grandpa. like lol hell yes this owns, but also, when the fuck would you ever wear it? like you couldn't wear it to any occasion that actually required a normal tuxedo, and if you wore it to a less formal event you'd have to have that ironic "haha lol look at this purple velvet tuxedo i inherited from my grandpa" attitude. i mean that still sounds fun to me, but you can't expect that to be everyone's jam

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

Anyway in case you want to look it up, Count Almaviva's "smoking jacket" is actually a work of Taishō-Roman Art Deco style textile art

[elilla@transmom.love]

@Xibanya as a tea ceremony girl I would 100% wear that to a (friendly, not overly serious) chakai. then again I'm a punk-looking foreigner from a tropical country, so bold kimono fit my overall deal. (I once made tea for the Urasenke iemoto in an exhibition tea room themed after the Amazon, complete with jaguar print motifs and Andean ceramics and everything). I think your orchid kimono would do well for a young adult woman in a typical tea meeting, but I can't think of occasions outside of the hobby. eccentric artist types from Ōsaka might wear it as a statement I guess.

anyway, magnificent gold brocade you got there, I love it

personally my dream would be to find one of these Edo-era skeligton motifs https://liniere.jp/column/lifestyle/47083/page3/
and rock a Jigoku-Taiyū goth queen. though even I wouldn't wear that to a chakai probably

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

detail from hem. dats real gold right there

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

i kinda feel like maybe i should not be making silly opera videos while wearing a beautiful antique but then if i didn't then there wouldn't so much footage of it for everyone to enjoy now would there?