Asican Pacific Appreciation Festival

Our little (or maybe it's big) base doesn't get a lot of Japanese, or even Asian, related events but May is Asian Pacific appreciation month, so at least in May we get something. And this year I got an opportunity to participate in their fashion show too :) It was sort of a short notice, I think from the time I found out about it till it actually happened, only 1.5 weeks passed. I volunteered to dress up 5 people, which I thought would be reasonable enough to do in 2 hours. And up till the day before I thought I will have no volunteers, since no one replied to my and organizers emails. The day before I found out that I will actually have 2 volunteers, but because it was even shorted notice I decided to go simple with their outfits.

The first volunteer wore my pink/purple hitoe komon with my brand new dark purple obi. Sadly I don't have any shots of the back of the obi, because then you would be able to see that the design on obi sort of mirrors the design on kimono :) I didn't bother with proper tabi, since I wasn't sure about her shoe size so I just went ahead and gave her my stretch tabi. At least those are one size fit all lol. The kimono looked like it was made for her! And the color was very good for her too :) That dark purple obi made the whole outfit a lot more mature than I expected. Considering that I literally put it together 30 minutes before I had to leave, I didn't know what to expect.

My other volunteer was a 13 year old girl. Her mom emailed me saying that her daughter would love to model a kimono. I got the email a day before, so I really didn't want to bother with digging out my kimono and juban. Instead I went an extra super easy route of..... yukata! Plus 13 year old is still a kid, and I really didn't want to trust my kimono to a kid I never met. After all yukata are washable lol. Good thing too, because right after I put it on her, she disappeared to hang out with her friends and we had to look for her later. But since she was wearing a yukata and not a full kimono getup, I wasn't a least bit concerned.

Originally I was thinking of wearing this outfit to London EXPO, but changed my mind at the last minute. The hat I have one was specifically bought for this outfit too, I thought it would fit with it nicely :) I got a lot of compliments, and even made a new Japanese friend.



I don't have any photos of me alone! GASP! Looks like I'll have to wear that outfit again soon and took more photos :)