À la recherche du temps perdu — Why Combinaison, Now.
- Hamanaka Akiko
- 15 hours ago
- 2 min read
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, each cut from something different. There were once nagajuban in chirimen crepe, not only in habutae silk. Today, in the secondhand market, you can find these — in white, in pink — for absurdly little money. And yet they are 100% silk. The way it clings softly against bare skin. The lightness that never resists the body's movement. A texture unmatched by anything else. Thread spun by a silkworm, with its life.
I kept wondering if there wasn't some way to answer to today's needs with this.
The fabric bolt is only 38cm wide — a width that makes it deeply inconvenient for constructing Western clothing. Force a pattern onto it, and the way the weave catches the light shifts, leaving the finished piece looking wrong. And yet, left as a nagajuban, it goes unnoticed by anyone. If it carried red, gold leaf, gaudy auspicious motifs, lavish embroidery — celebrities the world over would reach for it without hesitation. But the ones I want to save are the ones no one looks at twice. Something has to be done.
And so I thought of this: a combinaison, hand-stitched, that lets you feel the luxury of silk directly against the skin. Cut on the bias — it stretches far too easily. As if the softness and unruliness weren't already enough on their own.
What difficult children these are.
You may never wear a kimono. But you can wear the art of Wasai.
On ne porte pas forcément un kimono. Mais on peut porter l'art du Wasai.
— PASSIONEER
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