Wearing Twelve-layered Ceremonial Kimono (Juni-hitoe)
44 people attended this special event. The event was held in a tranquil atmosphere with traditional court
music and red carpet.
Juni Hitoe, twelve-layered ceremonial
kimonos started to appear around the 10th century in the Heian
Period, and were traditionally worn only by court ladies. The number of kimonos was not necessarily
exact twelve.
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Two ladies dressed up the model (one of Niji-no-kai
Japanese class students) using only two strings for twelve layers of kimono. The color arrangement is very important, and each
combination of colors has a name. The name of the color arrangement she was
dressed in is 'the scent of red plum'. They started dressing her with a red kimono,
moving on to lighter color, pink, and finally put on a purple coat. The
participants were very impressed with beautiful color gradation appeared at
sleeves and the neck.
It took only twenty minutes to
put on twelve-layers of kimono. They
dressed the set of kimonos so neatly in order that even after her taking off,
the kimonos remained just as they were worn, which is called “utsusemi”. It means a cast-off skin of a cicada.