Fa-fa-fa-fashion

Having received an invitation to a somewhat dressy event in the near future, I went out last night to look at cocktail dresses. Everything I tried on was hideous and/or made me look like a whale - and dammit, I just LOST ten pounds. Black doesn't do anything except make me look OLD.  Bubble hems look retarded on anyone who is not nineteen. And what's up with all this babydoll nonsense? F*** you, Arbiters of Fashion. I found one dress that I didn't hate - but I didn't love it enough to buy it either.

This is me flipping you and your anorexic scarecrows off. Yes, that is my ample backside with hand dyed horizontal stripes blazoned across it.



Then I remembered I'd made a dress awhile back. Silvery gray Chinese brocade with spider chrysanthemums on it. It needs to be taken in along the side seams now (go me!) and maybe I could do something a little different with the neckline, but it's flattering and PRETTY, and I will not look like a hag in it.
Hah!

Bookses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I needed to get away from the contractors next door and their damned scissor lift, so I went to Moe's in Berkeley.

First stop, the second floor. Nothing I had to have in the Asian literature nook, but I did score a bilingual edition of Japanese Tradition In Color And Form with photos by Sadao Hibi, primarily because it had some excellent photos of two period hiogi. I also stumbled across a cheap, used copy of Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue. Since I'm about halfway through her The Passion of Artemisia and enjoying it, it was worth grabbing.

Upstairs I managed not to drool on the pages as I perused at $225 copy of My Costumes: Emi Wada. Wada-san is responsible for costuming a number of Kurosawa films, including Ran. (More recently, she worked on Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Mongol.) Gorgeous stuff and too rich for my library. I did, however, throw myself on a Japan Society edition of The Tokugawa Collection: No Robes and Masks at $50. While most of the costumes therein date from the Edo period, some of them are at least early 17th century and are clearly within the stylistic ball park of what I'm interested in.

BTW, anyone interested in a copy of Alan Kennedy's Japanese Costume? Moe's has it for $35.

For bronx_baroness: About the Smackity Fan

It was the first fan I ever won on eBay, no doubt because the squeeing geisha wannabes thought it was too plain and nobody else bid on it. From the moment it arrived in its cradle of bubble wrap and cardboard tubing from Japan, I just knew.


It's the one at top left with the painting of a man in formal court togs. It's a good inch longer than any of the other sensu I've acquired, which you may or may not be able to tell by comparing it to the other fans in this photo.

Any of my readers who have ever held a well balanced weapon in hand will know the feeling. When folded, that fan just wants to be wielded. It's like was designed for beating the servants or smacking an impertinent fellow across the knuckles with. My other sensu don't feel like that at all.

I think it acquired the name and attendant reputation around the time I attended Known World Costuming and Rattan in Calontir in the fall of 2005. Interaction with the Bushi From The Outlands was definitely involved.

For the record, no one has ever actually been smacked with The Smackity Fan. (It would probably sting like hell!)

As for the other two fans in the shot? The purple one was a lucky find at a local flea market. It has a bit of water damage, but you can signal aircraft with it.

The last doesn't go out to events because I don't ever want to lose it. The back side is tarnished silver foil, the front was obviously once gold. Again, nobody else bid on it because it wasn't "pretty", but I think it's the star of my collection.