À la recherche du temps perdu / The Sleeping Beauty Awakens After 100 Years

1928. The enthronement of Emperor Showa. My great-grandmother attended in a kouchigi court robe. This is where the hundred-year journey begins.

In 1928, my great-grandparents attended the imperial enthronement ceremony of Emperor Showa.My great-grandmother stood there in a ko-uchigi, dressed according to court custom.

After the war, during a time of severe food shortages, my grandmother—who had married into the family—kept this garment.She never sold it.Even then, it must have been something to be preserved.

In 1958, when my mother, her granddaughter, was to be married,my grandmother took the entire ko-uchigi apart.Layer by layer, it was undone, returned to cloth, and remade into a futon for her daughter’s new life.

The ko-uchigi became a futon.

And yet, no one slept in it.My father refused—he felt it was too precious, almost sacred.

So it was placed deep inside a closet,and there, it slept.

For more than seventy years.

A sleeping beauty.

Then, it awakened.

I took it apart once more.The futon returned again to cloth.

From it, I made a haori for my son.And an obi for myself.

After one hundred years, the sleeping beauty opened its eyes,and its beauty returned to the light.

Textiles live on in this way.They are carried across time, changing form, never disappearing.

And now, another hundred-year journey begins.

The kouchigi was unfolded. Remade into a haori for her great-great-grandson. A form no one, a hundred years ago, could have imagined.

And for herself — a fukuro obi. The Sleeping Beauty awakens, and steps into the light.

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