​PASSIONEER

Nagajuban counts as underwear. Under a Western suit, or under a dress. You would never walk around the house in a nagajuban alone. And there is no fixed rule for what fabric a nagajuban should be made of. Looking at my mother's nagajuban, they are made from chirimen, rinzu, mousseline, hemp — all kinds of materials, and some are remade from haori that had grown too showy to wear as is. A quickened pulse, hidden exactly where no one looks. There is a view that says: it's under

Made to sit against bare skin, like an extension of the skin itself. The undergarment worn beneath a beautiful kimono is called nagajuban. It too is, by default, 100% silk, hand-sewn. But lately, extreme weather has made Japanese summers unbearably hot. Wearing a full kimono is hard enough in summer as it is. Bras, sleeveless tops, mini skirts. None of that can compete with a kimono when it comes to beating the heat. So summer nagajuban are made of hemp, or skipped altogether

Teaching a curve, little by little, to a cloth that was born straight. Kimono are cut in straight lines. The bolt is roughly 38cm wide, and that is what we use. Making a combinaison from it, that constraint alone creates problems. To let the beauty of drape come through, an A-line is ideal, and it follows the line of the body. There is a famous scene, in an old film, where a dress catches an updraft and billows. We won't go that far. But light, soft fabric clings to the body

No one looks twice. And yet — 100% silk. Thread spun by a silkworm with its life. In wasai, there is a technique called kurimawashi — the art of endless renewal.A kimono is a garment meant to be re-tailored. You unstitch what has been worn thin, and join together whatever still holds its worth, breathing new life into it. The most common example is the nagajuban — the underlayer worn beneath a kimono, pieced together from mismatched scraps of fabric: body, collar, sleeves, ea