Ro silk Irotomesode

It's a good summer this year, so lot's of sun and warm weather. Good for everybody, including me, not for wearing kimono *sigh* Today the sun took a day off (it seemed) so I dressed in my wonderful lilac irotomesode. Not that there was any ceremony to attend to, but who cares? This way I can practice my kitsuke with kimono appropriate to the season. So, if one of my best friends (or respected teachers) would ask me to dress in a kimono to attend their wedding/opening/christening….etc. I practiced to wear the appropriate kimono ^_^
I paired the kimono with a ro silk maru obi, it's really a kombi between a maru and a fukuro. Both sides are patterned, but there are blank parts too. Sadly there are quite a lot of stains, which is quite normal for ro silk, imagine hot humid weather and wearing at least three layers of silk, phew, I think only very few people would not sweat and they must gave a disorder (I think) *blush*
Against the rules I used a mint green obi age and obi jime set. It should be white ro, but I do not own one like that. Besides I read somewhere it was not a very strict rule, (subdued) colored ones could be good too. Since I have a lot of pastel ro silk accessory sets I decided to choose one of the colors in the kimono. The corn yellow looked nice and the very subtle pink was good too but the mint green gave the most "fresh" result, and we want to look fresh in summer time ^_^ I think the dark blue could look nice too, but I will try that later… maybe.
A picture of the back... I see I tilted the left of the obi a bit, that's weird? Not correct but I am not too disappointed *blush* considering I was really hot by the time I got to the obi. There are a lot of layers involved...
And I did not even wear the second white layer. If I remember correctly this second layer of kimono is called hiyoku, if the layer is padded (only the hem which happens a lot with susohiki and older kimono the under layer would be called hiyoku shitate) Again if I remember correctly. I hope its true looking at google I think so and I put it here too remember ^_^
The pattern are yuzen painted grasses of autumn, royal carriages, waves, curtains all summer motives. The patterns colors are off-white, dark purple, very light blue, dusty pink and even a little black, which is nice because there is black in the obi too. There is some shibory too, I doubt this is hand tied though I do not see any of the stitches you normally see with shibory, but I could be very wrong, maybe because the kimono is old the pin holes from tie-dying disappeared.
There is some lovely added embroidery too; it's not very clear in the picture... But it is there and quite many too, drool. The embroidery is very fine, clearly hand done and of the softest finest silk. The bellflowers have very soft white silk embroidered accents, the pink grasses a kind of metal thread and in the dark purple details some silver dust is sprinkled.
Even the inside skirt is gorgeous and has added embroidery.
The evening I found this kimono with in the long list of Ichiroya’s I had to buy her, she was so gorgeous. I was very surprised because she was somewhere in the back of the kimono list and photographed in front of the old shoji they had long time ago. I thought she was powder blue and my dream kimono; powder blue with darker blue accents.
When I got her I understood the sentence some sellers use "color depends on your monitor" even better then ever before, she was lilac. Now I am even happier Ichiroya now uses that html code thing. First I felt heavily disappointed, but after a few days she grew on me. Lilac with a different shade of purple, well, it's different, but still very good. The kimono is long enough for me and almost wide enough, so I could not send her back, even though badly discolored she can stay.
Now I took her of and put her on the wall so I can enjoy her that way too. I try to rotate my kimono as often as possible, So they get aired every ones in a while but will not get the change to fade, since (sun)light is the biggest harm for silk.

Last picture, hot summer day ^.~