I bought myself many lovely things recently, but some of them are a little confusing.





The seller described this one as Tsumugi, but also said it was made of summer wool. I thought tsumugi was made out of silk... can anyone help me on this?



This haori clearly looks like a men's haori, but the sleeves are throwing me off. Kimono-Lily thinks it's just a women's haori that was styled to look like a man's, but I'm still not totally sure on this. Any opinions?

Hmmm, I don't know about the second one, and I am not even sure of the first one either. ^^;; I've been told that Tsumugi refers to the weaving style, so I think it could be either silk or wool, but I am not sure if that is correct. :/

Your pieces are very iki though. You could totally do a Meiji styled Geiko with those.

I aspire towards iki. I've never been into overly cute things, and I love the subtleties of iki. Granted, I do prefer to wear my outlandish furisode when I go to conventions just so I can get photos taken. ...no one appreciates iki there....

I heard of tsumugi style weaving, too, so I thought it might have been that. Actually, I was hoping. That means not only do I have the coolest wool kimono ever, I have the coolest Tsumugi kimono ever. Have I ever said how much I adore yabane?

I think the haori is a really chic women's piece. What's more sophisticated and cheeky than a women's kimono styled completely as a man's? So iki.

Thank you for the help! I really needed confirmation to make sure my hopes weren't too outlandish.

Um, not to sound like a complete noob, but what exactly does iki mean? It's been confusing me for a few days ^^;

I love the wool tsumugi XD It's very pretty and the colours are so deep! Yabane is the arrow pattern, right? It's so cute >w<

That haori, I think I said this on the IG forum, is adorable. I love the horse and the monk! So gorgeous XD The painting is phenomenal, do you have any close-ups of it? :3

Iki is the concept of understated or hidden beauty. It really doesn't translate very well, but that's how I understand it. It came into being when the goverment cracked down on the merchants of the Genroku Period (when Yuzen and Shibori were born/the rage) and made sumptuary laws that forbid them to wear showy fabrics. They basically couldn't look richer than the samurai and daimyo, even though they were actually richer than them. So, they turned their backs on being showy and said that being understated with hidden beauty was way cooler. Instead of wearing a kimono in bright red crepe, it was much cooler to wear a dark blue wool kimono that was lined in the red crepe. Just a flash of it would be seen when the person walked, and that was sexy. So, iki is being cool/fashionable/sexy or whatever in a subtle way.

Ya means arrow and bane is derived from hane, which means feather. So, it literally means 'arrow feather', and it means the fletching of an arrow. I think this is considered a feminine motif because girls would be given sacred arrows for this one festival (whose name I can't remember). I need to look into it.

The haori is embroidered I think. I can get more detailed pictures later. I hope that answered your questions .

...That makes sense! No wonder a lot of kimono are lined in red! Thank you for explaining that to me, as well as about the yabane pattern ^^ It's very pretty.

...really? It looks so flat. Maybe it's just the shadows ^^;

I have pictures of it now,







That looks like embroidery to me. I'm not going to be so hopeful as to think the design was woven (as monumentally cool as that would be).

Wow, now that's detail! O_O

Those are nice! I think though your haori might be even cooler than you think; the eveness of the stitching makes me think the image was woven. It reminds me a lot of an old obi I have with a woven design...same type of look. So maybe your cool haori is super-cool ^^

Wonderful lining. It certainly looks woven to me.

My mother and I were confused over it when I first received it, because I thought it felt flat enough to be woven, but she wasn't sure. I think that compared to a modern machine weave that this lining does feel different, but compared to other embroidered kimono I have this one definitely feels woven. I think it makes it incredibley cool.

rock on, fuyohime!