Thread by @OhsakaRin

honestly I can’t believe that stupid drama about me pointing out that in kimono dressing, we eliminate curves and use special padding to make the body as flat as possible and therefore drawing kimono with boobs hanging out is inaccurate… is STILL being quoted. from LAST YEAR

I offended a bunch of artists (like I do with weebs evidently) because I see Western artists draw characters in kimono like they’re drawing bodies with Western clothing where they don’t have such padding to make the body a cylinder shape

People were SO UPSET that I explained as a professional kimono stylist how Not Sexy the kimono actually is when it comes to all those layers

Here’s a fun fact: in JAV they use yukata instead of kimono usually BECAUSE of this

Yukata doesn’t require padding to eliminate the curves/make the body straight up and down and that makes it easier to show off the chest in sexy ways.

That’s why if you draw a character in yukata with a bigger chest, that’s more accurate than with a properly dressed kimono

For kimono to be dressed in a sexy way, it’s probably best to do it like so:

Madam M here is not wearing the nagajuban or any of the usual kimono underwear we use today except I see a sarashi for some breast support.

this makes it easier to drape the kimono over the shoulder

like ultimately if you wanna ignore this and do whatever you want, then do whatever you want

I was just venting because it annoys me to see it being inaccurate. I’m professionally trained in kimono; I will find it annoying lol. But if you don’t care then have fun!

the worst part about that drama I made was that I intentionally made that thread on my fandom account (NOT this one) thinking NO ONE would see it. I just wanted to vent my frustration.

Instead, it TOOK OFF. I found this just now. My stupid tweet right there!!! Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh

Here’s an IRL example of how difficult it is to do the “sexy” look if someone is already properly dressed in kimono

This is one of my models. I dressed her formally for the first half of her shoot. To do the sexy second half… the nagajuban had to go lol and it was undone

The only way to make it work once she had been properly dressed the formal way was to literally undo all of my work lol. It was impossible to get the shoulders exposed otherwise.

For a half hour, they kept trying to loosen the nagajuban and trying to get it to fall right 😅

Like… they had to untie EVERYTHING. No more obi, even.

You’d have to literally start out dressing the kimono with it already draped like that to expose the shoulder. You can’t tug on it and expect it to fall down that far. That’s not how kimono works lol

Photographer: we want a sexy look now

Me, who had to go dress the other models: like… what do you have in mind

Photographer: you can pull it down over her shoulders, right?

Me: LOL nope. I’d have to dress her all over again and I can’t.

Photographer: Wtf seriously?

by the time I got the next model dressed in kimono, the entire thing had been undone. I felt so bad for the model (her mom was there!!! watching the whole thing!! And she was so embarrassed like MOM IT’S OKAY I PROMISE NOTHING BAD IS GONNA HAPPEN)

what a fun day that was lol

If you’re curious about kimono padding (what does it look like? what IS it?) I wrote a bit here:

https://twitter.com/mainichi_kimono/status/1587235641875521536