It would be great if people could guess right off that I am Japanese-Finnish-American. But then I'd have to be wearing a kimono and pulling a reindeer.
Some of the kimonos took as long as four to five months to make, with all the layers that go into it.
In real life, a lot of people at that level will have their kimonos made especially for them.
The wrap dress is the most traditional form of dressing: It's like a robe, it's like a kimono, it's like a toga. It doesn't have buttons or zippers. What made it different was that it was jersey; therefore, it was close to the body and it was a print.
I remember the Silver Jubilee clearly because we had a fancy dress street party in Sheffield. I dressed up as a Japanese girl with a too-big red kimono - cultural appropriation hadn't been invented in 1977. I was six.
The kimono, haori, and girdle, and even the long hanging sleeves, have only parallel seams, and these are only tacked or basted, as the garments, when washed, are taken to pieces, and each piece, after being very slightly stiffened, is stretched upon a board to dry.
Paul Poiret did wonderful things because he was so influenced by motifs, but Vionnet really understood the kimono and took the geometric idea to construct her clothes - and that brought such freedom into European clothes in the 1920s.
We are totally open kimono with regulators.
I love kimonos because you can just throw them on over anything. Ever since I got my first kimono from Lane Bryant in high school and thought, 'This is amazing; I can wear it with everything!'
The neck is kind of what's sexy in Japan, so you have to have the kimono a little bit back. It was just a whole different way of appealing to what was sexy.
