Japanese Fashion: The Underwear Story
I have a second little tidbit for today, a story Miwa told me while we were watching a movie last night. It's pretty random, but funny, so I thought I would share. Don't ask how in the world we got on this topic... I think it came up when Cameran Diaz was holding up her underwear (in The Holiday) and Miwa asked if I knew that people didn't used to wear undwear in Japan. Haha, typical randomness.
Ok, I know there are a lot of cotton layers that go under a kimono (with a similar shape), but I am not quite clear over all of them, so I asked Miwa to clarify. Miwa explained that women wore nothing under their kimonos (no bloomers or anything) in the old days, until one tragic event changed Japan's fashion history forever. Here's how it goes:
I can't tell you when it happened, but the changes were apparently sparked by a large fire at a big department store in Tokyo, sometime in the last century. The store was rather large and modern, but the flames started at the lower levels of the building, and people moved up (rather than out the windows) to escape them. Well, after a while, there was a large gathering of women trapped at the top of this building. They finally realized, a bit late, that their only way of escaping the fire was going out a window, so they tied their obi (kimono belts) together, creating a make-shift ladder to climb down from the upper-storey window. Well, unfortunately, the obi is the one thing that fastens a kimono (holding the top and under-layers together), so once the women had sacrificed their belts, they knew they would be showing the crowds below a lot more than an act of bravery if they attempted to climb down. No underwear and basically just open robes...you get the idea.
Rather than facing the embarrassment of flashing the entire crowd below, several women at the top chose death by fire. News of the event spread across the country, and not long after, underwear had been introduced to the Japanese populace, sparing fellow & future Japanese women of a similar fate.
I've been through Google, trying to verify this tragic story, but I haven't found much. There is a huge fashion museum in Kobe that I've been trying to get to since I arrived (esp since the building itself is as elaborate as the Guggenheim). I hope to pay a visit to the museum this fall, so I'll keep you posted if I see any follow-up there.
Ok, I know there are a lot of cotton layers that go under a kimono (with a similar shape), but I am not quite clear over all of them, so I asked Miwa to clarify. Miwa explained that women wore nothing under their kimonos (no bloomers or anything) in the old days, until one tragic event changed Japan's fashion history forever. Here's how it goes:
I can't tell you when it happened, but the changes were apparently sparked by a large fire at a big department store in Tokyo, sometime in the last century. The store was rather large and modern, but the flames started at the lower levels of the building, and people moved up (rather than out the windows) to escape them. Well, after a while, there was a large gathering of women trapped at the top of this building. They finally realized, a bit late, that their only way of escaping the fire was going out a window, so they tied their obi (kimono belts) together, creating a make-shift ladder to climb down from the upper-storey window. Well, unfortunately, the obi is the one thing that fastens a kimono (holding the top and under-layers together), so once the women had sacrificed their belts, they knew they would be showing the crowds below a lot more than an act of bravery if they attempted to climb down. No underwear and basically just open robes...you get the idea.
Rather than facing the embarrassment of flashing the entire crowd below, several women at the top chose death by fire. News of the event spread across the country, and not long after, underwear had been introduced to the Japanese populace, sparing fellow & future Japanese women of a similar fate.
I've been through Google, trying to verify this tragic story, but I haven't found much. There is a huge fashion museum in Kobe that I've been trying to get to since I arrived (esp since the building itself is as elaborate as the Guggenheim). I hope to pay a visit to the museum this fall, so I'll keep you posted if I see any follow-up there.
posted by Brenda Ann Elizabeth McKinney @ 2:44 PM
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