7/26/2008

At this afternoon’s neighborhood festival, I bumped into many cute Japanese girls dressed yukata (casual cotton kimono) like this photo of a girl in retro indigo that I snapped on-the-fly with my cell phone. It’s a common sight at fireworks displays, festivals, and summer events to see normally-dressed-to-the-teeth-in-high-fashion young woman wearing traditional yukata.

Recently I have been seeing a lot of retro-looking yukata on the streets like the above photo, and I have been wondering where the hell people are getting the fabrics from the 1920s and 30s for them.

Well, yesterday I figured it out. I was at UNiQLO, Japan’s version of the Gap, and I snapped this picture of full-drag, retro, yukata set priced under $29, which is a hell a lot less than the regular price of a kimono that starts at $1000.


The photo above shows a women’s yukata set called the “Waterdrop” offered by UNIQLO (which is the charmingly rational way Japanese refer to polka dots) by the renowned Japanese artist, Junichi Nakahara.

It turns out that these yukata sets were designed Junichi Nakahara (1913 – 1988) who was a fashion illustrator and print maker. In the 1920s and 1930s his fashion illustrations of young girls with big eyes were groundbreaking, and today he is considered a forerunner of the manga style of art!