By Nadine Kam

Nadine Kam photos
Cathy Sumimoto, left, and Emma Wo wear creations by Kimono Samba’s Chieko Yamaguchi. Cathy’s dress is made from fabric from a wedding obi. Yamaguchi will be back to show with her students at the Japanese Women’s Society fashion show, “Open Your Tansu.”

After spending a day on Maui, I left early Sunday morning, Jan. 27, to make it over to the Japanese Women’s Society Foundation’s new year Shinnen Enkai celebration at Natsunoya Tea House on Alewa Heights. I felt like I was on “Amazing Race” hoping timing would be good. It wasn’t so good when the company called to pick me up at Four Seasons never showed at 7:20 a.m., then said the pickup time that had been arranged was 9:45 a.m. Well, my flight was to leave at 9, so that wouldn’t do.

Made it over to the airport by taxi, where the lines waiting to get through inspection were as long as those to any big concert or Black Friday sale. Yuck. Honolulu departures are easy by comparison except they really seem to be suspicious of laptop computers. Luckily, once on Oahu I was out and running and in a taxi en route home by 10. I live a couple blocks down the hill from the teahouse, so walking there for the 10:30 a.m. event was fairly easy. I figured it was close from having driven past there before, but what I didn’t get from being in a car is that, true to the Heights name, it was all uphill.

Chieko Yamaguchi showed how her modern interpretations of kimono can be worn with traditional kimono, as worn from left by Yutaka Shiomi, Sadako Miyashiro and Tamae Oshiro.

The event offered a sneak preview of the society’s April 13 fashion show, “Open Your Tansu.” Just as the name implies, it’s an invitation to dig into your closets and chests to discover what kimono and obi have been stored away, just waiting to be reborn as a new garment. Among the models were JWS members and beauty queens Cathy Sumimoto, Emma Wo and Aureana Tseu.

Chieko teaches the art of giving birth to new designs through informal classes in Japan, working under the name Kimono Samba. She doesn’t sell her work, but empowers women to try it on their own, saying it involves mostly cutting, very little sewing, and involves no modern fasteners such as buttons or zippers. A lot of the work is held together by tying pieces together. She’ll be back with her students for the April show.

Nadine Kam videosChieko Yamaguchi demonstrates Kimono Samba style.Traveling with Chieko was Hanako Yuuki, below, who practices the art of kirigami or cutting paper. Her hat is covered with nuno hearts and topped with a bird. The little pieces of fabric art are sewn from kimono remants so that no piece of these beautiful silks goes to waste. Here’s a Yuuki’s kirigami demonstration on video:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 12:42 am and is filed under International fashion, art, Fashion shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.