Hiroko Takahashi
From PingMag, an interview with Hiroko Takahashi designer of the above kimonos:
How did you start making kimonos, which has now become your most representative work?
As a child, I wanted to become a fashion designer after I saw reports on Paris Fashion Week on TV, so I took a fashion design course at my high school and studied the basics there. After that, I studied traditional dyeing and weaving from the crafts course at Tokyo University of the Arts. But back then, I was immersed in dressmaking in my free hours outside college studies, and even went as far as setting up my own independent brand. It was in those days that I decided to challenge traditional kimono making for the first time, for my graduate presentation in the fourth year of my undergraduate course.
You’d always been making ordinary clothes until then, what made you suddenly turn your eyes to kimonos?
People usually spend a year or so for their graduate exhibition, but Western clothes to me were already so familiar and I found it difficult to perceive them as pieces of work. At the time, I was making clothes with my original fabrics, but Western clothes had limited space to show the patterns of the fabric, and they use many curved lines that make it difficult to connect to the patterns. On the other hand, a kimono can show a large chunk of patterns. Also, I was studying how to dye kimono fabric, so I thought I should challenge Japanese textiles. When I told that to my professor, he was really supportive because although there were many professors who had specialized knowledge on kimonos, students had little interest in it.
