Japanese Dress in Detail

by Josephine Rout

Genres: Fashion, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 208
Series: Fashion in Detail
Rating:

Synopsis:

A unique insight into the history and key themes of Japanese dress from the eighteenth century to the present, Japanese Dress in Detail reveals the elaborate embroidery, precise folds, and sophisticated dyes that form some of the most beautiful garments in the Victoria and Albert Museum's unparalleled Japanese dress collection. This book provides readers with the rare opportunity to examine historical clothing, from breathtaking Edo-period kimono, court robes, and No-- theatre costumes to indigo-dyed utilitarian garments and exciting contemporary designs.

Featuring both garments and accessories, this book is an extraordinary exploration of the beauty and complexity of Japanese fashion. Specially commissioned close-up photography and authoritative texts accompany each garment, and front-and-back line drawings make this publication an invaluable resource for students, collectors, designers, fashion lovers, and Japanophiles.

As usual for the books in this collection from the V&A, Japanese Dress in Detail is rich with photographs and illustrations to help understand and explain the details of garments. I must admit that it helped that I’d also seen some of them in person now at the V&A itself; though the fashion gallery is currently closed, several of the items are to be found in the Japanese gallery. It was extra-neat to read about the items I’d actually seen and got to examine in a few more dimensions (even if through glass).

I found it interesting how the clothes were mostly from 1850 or so onward, 1750 at oldest (if I remember the dates rightly) — the history of contact with Japan also making an imprint here, compared to the much older clothes from Britain and the US (and, if I remember rightly, China as well).

One of my favourite garments of the book was utilitarian, though: a fireman’s outfit which was heavily padded both to provide protection from falling objects and so it could be soaked to help with protection from flames.

Overalll, as ever, a lovely and fascinating volume.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)