Vintage Japanese Kimonos

wafuku - noun: traditional Japanese clothing

Wafuku Firefox Personas
If you use Firefox for web browsing, you can now add a Persona, which is a decorative band across the top of the browser, where the menus are.

There are now pretty wafuku.co.uk Personas available (shown below), in five colour options, that you can easily add to your Firefox browser. They are, of course, free to use. The wafuku Personas are designed to be gentle on the eyes and pretty, while ensuring the menus and links are still easy to read. You can find the wafuku geisha Personas here.

The mauve version...



The pink version...



The turquoise version...



The sunset version...



The green version...



They are very simple to add to Firefox; you just install Personas here and, once it is installed (which only takes a moment), you will find all of the wafuku Personas here.

If, once you have Personas installed in Firefox, you place your mouse over one on the wafuku Personas page, you will see a preview of it on your browser and you just click the 'Wear It' button if you want to add it.

You can also find them by typing wafuku in the search box at the top right of the Firefox Personas page.

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To see a vast selection of vintage and antique Japanese kimonos, visit www.wafuku.co.uk Based in Scotland and selling worldwide. Whether you want to own and wear a real kimono, a beautiful piece of wearable Japanese textile art, or hang one for display or even just have a look at stunningly beautiful kimonos, you may enjoy browsing through the selection on my site. I have high quality, vintage kimonos, obis and accessories (and much more) for men, women and children. Pop over to wafuku.co.uk and have a look

How shibori textile art is created.

Shibori is what we in the West know as tie-die but, as with so very many things, the Japanese textile artisans excel at it and their version is usually intricate, extremely precise, of great skill and very time consuming to create. In Japan it is considered a very highly prized textile. Shibori garments are incredibly expensive and much revered. An elaborate, entirely shibori kimono can take a whole year to make and the cost is therefore exorbitant. A shibori haori kimono jacket is a status symbol, slightly more affordable than a shibori kimono, showing that the wearer paid a great deal for the garment. One way many people can afford a shibori item is to have a shibori obiage, which is a scarf-like obi accessory, worn tied round the top of the obi sash.

There are machine made shibori fabrics nowadays but they are easy to spot, especially as the dots it creates tend to be very regular (it is still rather expensive, though), and one sometimes sees prints done to look like shibori but they are completely flat, without the crepe texture that the real thing has.

The more colours used to dye shibori, the more it will cost. Shibori work can be further enhanced by yuzen artwork or embroidery. Yuzen is artwork that is hand drawn or painted onto the fabric and shibori work may have yuzen details added to it; it is then known as tsujigahana. There's an especially good example of tsujigahana in the picture here of shibori haori kimono jackets; it is the cream coloured one with the beautiful, hand painted branch.

You can see how shibori textile is made and why it is so expensive here. Includes video footage. It opens in a new window, leaving this page open.

Urushi is Japanese lacquer. It has many uses and one is in textile design.

Thread, usually silk, is coated with lacquer, then used to weave beautiful textile art. Textile with urushi weave is found on some kimonos and is particularly popular on haori kimono jackets. You can see several urushi haori here.

Urushi is sometimes just a coloured lacquer but often it's metallic, found in shades of gold, silver, pewter, copper, bronze and a whole rainbow of metallic colours. On some garments it is quite subtle, on others it is bright and spectacular.

While kimonos may have a somewhat limited use in the West, mostly worn at home as robes, haori jackets are very wearable with western clothing. Haori are wafuku (traditional Japanese clothing), designed to be worn over kimonos, but are lovely worn with yofuku (non Japanese style clothing), looking wonderful worn casually with jeans and the like or dressed up for a special occasion. The designs make them extra special and urushi ones are real eye catchers.

You can see hundreds of haori, with and without urushi designs, at www.wafuku.co.uk, as well as many kimonos and all sorts of other wafuku.

You can test your knowledge of traditional Japanese kimonos and other wafuku with my Kimono Knowledge quiz at kimono-knowledge-squidoo-quiz.

The quiz has 10 questions with multiple choice answers. Even if you don't know the answers, they are shown when you complete the quiz, so it's a fun and easy way to learn 10 facts about kimonos.

If you have a few moments to spare, check it out at kimono-knowledge-squidoo-quiz.

I specialise in wafuku (traditional Japanese clothing) and have a huge, personal collection of it. I also sell large and varied selection on my www.wafuku.co.uk website.
The Japanese excel at textile art and it can be seen on many of their beautiful kimonos and kimono jackets.
Most are silk and entirely hand tailored. They are incredibly expensive garments when new, so a vintage one is a good option, as the Japanese take great care of them and vintage ones are often as good as new but much more affordable.

I also see my www.wafuku.co.uk website as my gallery where I can display and show off the exquisite Japanese garments and wonderful Japanese textile art, so, even if you don't want to buy, have a look and think of it just as a gallery where you can spend a pleasant time viewing the items on display and, if you choose, can also learn from the many information pages and videos I have on the site too.

I have just added another 9 Japanese haori kimono jackets to my www.wafuku.co.uk website. My neck aches now. I already have about 350 on my site and the new selection added is varied and lovely.
Haori kimono jackets are lovely garments; intended to be worn by the Japanese over their kimonos, they look wonderful worn with western style clothing; worn casually with jeans or dressed up in evening wear. They are long jackets, upper to lower thigh length, with the traditional kimono style swinging sleeves. They often have the most stunning textile art, which may be woven into the fabric, printed onto it (usually printed by hand) or yuzen (hand painted). Sometimes they have touches of embroidery or gold lacquer detailing etc. too. They are always exquisite.
You can see them at www.wafuku.co.uk

Here's a screenshot of my www.wafuku.co.uk vintage Japanese kimono website's homepage. I hope it tempts you to pay it a visit, even just to see the gorgeous Japanese kimonos and other vintage Japanese items.
It's pleasing to browse through and there is masses of useful information about traditional Japanese clothing there too.

Why not settle back, relax and just enjoy what you find there; the beauty of Japanese textile art and the wonderful garments created from it.

Please have a look. It's a visual treat.