#aiaie

This year's Christmas gift from my husband was a bespoke yukata made by Zsanett Hegedűs, the designer of the brand AIAIÉ.

I have always been enthusiastic about her love of luxurious textiles (she made several of my husband's suits and shirts) and I participated at two of her Material Love courses already. I had been wondering if she would be interested in a project like this, and she said yes immediately.

I might have not elaborated in that yet, but I have recently started studying to become a certified kimono instructor, and my teacher's been teasing me a lot about my kimono being short. I know, I know, story of my life. My educator is about the same height as me so I asked her how she finds the right size. Turns out she gets almost everything tailored. Oh well...

So around the beginning of September, I started hunting for the right material for a yukata. I chose yukata for several reasons, one being that this was supposed to be a trial project and yukata is unlined. I also happen to have one at home for reference, just having to scale it up a bit. Hitoe (unlined) summer kimono could also have been a good choice, however, I do not have one for reference at home. The other reason is that my other yukata is a bit uncomfortably short.

The third reason was that all the silk tanmono (kimono bolt) I found on the west side of the internets are vintage, and after discussing them with our tailor, who could tell me the expected amount of shrinkage just by looking at them, we realised that they might not be wide enough. We are talking about 60-year-old, super cheap silk bolts, 12m each, the width ranging between 36-37,5cm.

To be on the safe safe side, I dove into the Japanese Amazon to look for a 38cm wide tanmono and less to my surprise, more to my disappointment the modern silk tanmono prices were five to ten times the vintage ones'. At this point I decided about yukata cotton.

I like to think I look good in black. Although my desire had been to find a more modern pattern, opportunities were limited. Still quite happy with discovering an original Hamamatsu cotton tanmono with the semi-transparent, light, summery weave. Zsanett was quite impressed that no amount of colour was bleeding during the first wash. Hamamatsu cotton are famous for their exceptional quality and crispiness.

No one would have thought it really required all 12metres of textile to make the one yukata, but literally nothing was left of it but a 20cm piece at the end.

Zsanett made the effort of creating a perfect symmetry of the pattern through the majority of the yukata, which was probably not a must but a truly nice touch.