“Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection,” opening today in the Metropolitan Museum’s Japanese Wing, is an immersive, must-see exhibition that considers the evolution of this foundational garment within Japan and its relation to the West. There are many ways to explain the cross-cultural appeal of the kimono. One of the most persuasive is the purity and self-sufficiency of its material existence: A T-shape cut from a single piece of cloth, its basic shape accommodates all sizes and genders and respects the cloth from which it is made.
The show, which includes a promised gift of numerous modern kimonos from the John C. Weber Collection of Japanese art, is largely concerned with the Edo Period (1603-1868), when society was highly codified. “Kimono Style” opens with theater costumes and garments worn for specific functions. From there, it’s not much of a jump to grasp that fashion was a prop that helped all members of society play their given roles. Materials, colors, and decorative motifs communicated the kind of info you might Google today, like gender, age, marital status, rank, and occupation. This information was “protected” by sumptuary laws.
High-status Japanese women were largely confined to a world of interiors, wore traditional clothing, and were rarely seen in public. In contrast, members of other classes had more mobility and freedom of choice in dress. Later, in 1910s Paris, some kimono-inspired designs were worn as deshabille, i.e. for at home visits or trysts. (In Remembrance of Things Past, Albertine, the narrator’s love interest, wears a kimono.)
The kimono’s transition from a cloistered, national existence to one of global influence indeed seems to have been seamless. The traditional garments were known to the West through woodblock prints and exported decorative arts even before the Meiji Period (1868-1912). It was then that Japan underwent a period of intense modernization, which included the importation of textile and sewing machinery, retail and marketing concepts, as well as Western clothing. While it is the case that some of the West’s fascination with the kimono does trade in stereotypes of the East, “Kimono Style” succeeds in recording the dialogue between cultures and offers what museum director Max Hollein describes as a “transnational perspective” on the topic. A section of the exhibition is dedicated to meisen, more widely produced kimonos for the Japanese market, which sometimes featured motifs inspired by Western art.
Since the turn of the century, there have been several waves of Japanism in Western fashion, and they went far beyond surface patterns, motifs, and textiles. Translating the idea of negative space and the Japanese concept of ma (the space between the body and the fabric) required new cuts that suited new ways of living. Kimono-inspired clothes hang from the shoulder instead of being waist-centric. As guest co-curator Karen Van Godtsenhoven writes in her catalog essay, “ ‘the kimono mind’—a term coined in 1965 by the architect-historian Bernard Rudofsky—has become an abiding metaphor for Japan in Western fashion design, a spur to liberate women’s bodies from previous constraints.”
The most obvious of these was the corseted S-curve of the Belle Epoque, which is beautifully refuted by a draped, one-seam velvet coat by Paul Poiret on view in the show. There’s also a little black dress by Madeleine Vionnet, that’s more than Deco. According to the caption, the designer’s innovative bias cut was influenced by the geometry of the kimono. By the mid-century, Cristobal Balenciaga would counter the curvy and constricting New Look shape with his Sack silhouettes of 1957. The third wave of Japanism in fashion is represented in the exhibition by the work of Western designers including Alexander McQueen and John Galliano for Maison Margiela, as well as by pioneering Japanese designers including Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, and Yohji Yamamoto, to whom, the press materials note, “the kimono dynamically reflects Japanese culture both to the world and back onto itself.”
“Kimono Style” is a work of beauty and scholarship; it is also a much-needed oasis of calm. The low lighting that is required to protect the textiles sets a reflective, interior mood that is reinforced by the gentle sound of a fountain. All the elements of the exhibition come together to cross the T, as it were, and reinforce the narrative that is spun around a garment that is particular to a place yet has had global appeal for centuries. “They are still enjoyed in Japan; they can be enjoyed in the West,” says Monika Bincsik, the Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, and this exhibition. “Somehow the kimono has some kind of unifying power.”
“Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection,” is on view through February 20, 2023. Some objects will be rotated in October.
