My very first London EXPO :)

Wearing kimono two days in a row? Kudos to me for that :) Yesterday I went to London EXPO for the first time, and after my earlier disappointment in London Film and Comic Con, I decided not to cosplay but instead wear my kimono. Even if I get disappointed yet again, at least I wore a kimono right? Well... I wasn't disappointed. :) I actually liked it a lot! Yes it was crowded, yes it was full of people in (crappy) costumes but I expected it at a convention. The only thing that I didn't like was that they held their presentations, talks and workshops in the main convention hall, where it was so loud that you couldn't hear anything. I miss US conventions where workshops get their own separate rooms. I will definitely come back again, this time in a costume tho. ;P

I decided to go all out for the con. Lots of makeup, false eyelashes, crazy hat, you name it. :) For kimono, I wore my black hitoe with bright yellow abstract obi and red obiage and obijime. Of course, being me and just having to be all matching, I also wore red tabi and gloves, and yellow zori. ;P







Sadly I had a bad kitsuke day that day :( It just didn't want to work for me! My juban sleeves were showing, obi was crooked and the right side of kimono kept slipping down. And I also learned not to wear dark hats with my current hair color because they just get lost and hard to see.





I wish I could have met up with UK kimono club there. For all my suggesting of meeting there, I only briefly saw Isla and Hong and then didn't even see them again at all :( However, the highlight of the con for me was meeting Svetlana Shmakove, the creator of Dramacon. I wanted to meet her ever since I read the first volume. No, actually probably ever since I saw her drawings in Christopher Hart's How to Draw Manga series. I didn't know what time her signing was, and actually didn't even know where it was held. On my way to ask, I stopped by Tokyopop booth and long and behold, there she was! About to leave lol. She stopped to sign her book for me, and we chatted in Russian for a few minutes. Turns out she likes kimono too, and even owns several of them. Overall, she is super cool and I'm extremely happy because I got to meet her :) :)