The Kimono in Print: 300 Years of Japanese Design will be the first ever publication devoted to examining the kimono as a major source of inspiration, and later vehicle for experimentation, in Japanese print design and culture from the Edo period (1603-1868) to the Meiji period (1868-1912). Print artists, through the wide circulation of prints, have documented the ever-evolving trends in fashion, have popularized certain styles of dress, and have even been known to have designed kimonos. Some famous print designers also were directly involved in the kimono business as designers of kimono pattern books, such as Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671-1751) and Okumura Masanobu (1686-1764). The dialogue between fashion and print is illustrated here by approximately 70 Japanese prints and illustrated books--by Nishikawa Sukenobu, Suzuki Harunobu, Utagawa Kunisada, Kikukawa Eizan, and Kamisaka Sekka, among others. The group of five essays features new research and scholarship by an international group of leading scholars working today at the intersection of the Japanese print and kimono worlds and the social, cultural, and global significances circulated therein.

What is the kimono? Everyday garment? Art object? Symbol of Japan? As this book shows, the kimono has served all of these roles, its meaning changing across time and with the perspective of the wearer or viewer. Kimono: A Modern History begins by exposing the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century foundations of the modern kimono fashion industry. It explores the crossover between ‘art’ and ‘fashion’ in this period at the hands of famous Japanese painters who worked with clothing pattern books and painted directly onto garments. With Japan’s exposure to Western fashion in the nineteenth century, and Westerners’ exposure to Japanese modes of dress and design, the kimono took on new associations and came to symbolize an exotic culture and an alluring female form. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the kimono industry was sustained through government support. The line between fashion and art became blurred as kimonos produced by famous designers were collected for their beauty and displayed in museums, rather than being worn as clothing. Today, the kimono has once again taken on new dimensions, as the Internet and social media proliferate images of the kimono as a versatile garment to be integrated into a range of individual styles. Kimono: A Modern History, the inspiration for a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,not only tells the story of a distinctive garment’s ever-changing functions and image, but provides a novel perspective on Japan’s modernization and encounter with the West.

The book explores the use and meaning of the kimono in America and traces the transformation of the garment from its ethnic origins, through its many appearances in fine art, costume, and high fashion, to its role in the contemporary Art-to-Wear Movement. It explores the American use of the kimono as a garment, as a symbol, and as an art form.

Japanese kimonos are wearable art. Celebrating the patterns and motifs adorning the traditional costumes, 30 ready-to-color illustrations present kimono-clad figures awash in pastoral scenes and wandering abstracts.

Embodying an intricate blend of pattern and color, texture and composition, the Japanese kimono is a stunning garment with origins dating back to the Nara period (645?794). Its history is rich in tradition, culture, and art. Drawing her inspiration from the 18th- and 19th-century Japanese woodblock prints by such masters as Utamaro and Hiroshige, designer and fashion historian Ming-ju Sun has created this exotic collection of 26 exquisite costumes with two charming Japanese dolls to model them. The kimonos display a broad range of lovely fabrics ? from simple, practical cottons to luxurious silks and satins ? and a variety of traditional decorative elements ? geometrics, florals, stripes, checks, plaids, animals, landscapes, Japanese characters, and circular crests. All are sensitively illustrated with clean line and lush color in the style of Japanese woodcuts. This entertaining and educational paper doll collection will be a favorite with children and collectors. As a full-color survey of the Japanese kimono as an art form, the volume will be valued by costume designers, students of the history of fashion, and the many people fascinated by Japanese art and culture.

Highlights from one of the world’s most outstanding collections of traditional Japanese kimonos, with stunning examples from the Edo period through the twentieth century In traditional Japanese dress, the surface of the garment is most important. The T-shaped, straight-seamed, front-wrapping kimono has changed its shape very little over the centuries, but the weaving, dyeing, and embroidery used to decorate its surface make each a unique, wearable work of art. Choice of color and pattern vary richly to indicate gender, age, status, wealth, and taste, and are executed in a complex combination of weaving, dyeing, and embroidery techniques, with a single garment sometimes requiring the expert skills of a number of different artisans. Kimono showcases a magnificent range of kimonos from the the Khalili Collection, which comprises more than 200 garments and spans almost 300 years of Japanese textile artistry. Gorgeously illustrated and written by an international team of experts, the book surveys kimono of the imperial court, samurai aristocracy, and affluent merchant classes of the Edo period (1603–1868); the shifting styles and new color palette of Meiji period dress (1868–1912); and the bold and dazzling kimono of the Taisho (1912–26) and early Showa (1926–89) periods, when designers used innovative new techniques and fused traditional looks with inspiration from the modernist aesthetic then sweeping the world.

The first major book on Japanese textile artist Itchiku Kubota, published to accompany a touring exhibition.