Going out for sushi

Yesterday I went to Cambridge because I haven't had sushi for a while. Of course, it also meant a kimono day! I didn't have much of an outfit planned, other than knowing which shoes I wanted to wear, so I just picked a kimono that I thought would go well with them. At the end, my whole outfit turned out to be even more monochromatic than usual.

The obi I'm wearing is the one that Hong gave me a while back. It has kitty paws and cat designs :)

Overall I'm pretty happy with this coordination, with the exception of the way I tied obiage. The top ones looks pretty sloppy, so I re-tied right before I went out. It's hard to see because none of the close up photos turned out, but you can see a bit in the haori photo.

As always, you can check the rest of the photos out in my Facebook album.

~ Lyuba

Christmas shopping in Cambridge

I can't believe it's December already! It seems like just yesterday I've started my once a week kimono challenge, but in reality it's been almost 12 month already. Wow!

Today I went to Cambridge with a friend to do some much needed Christmas shopping. I didn't buy that much, but I definitely needed to get out of the house, and wear kimono of course. I choose to wear one of the new kimono that I've got recently with my new gold striped boots. The boots were a bit of a gamble, because they are actually knee high! Those that know me also know that I rarely, if ever, wear knee high boots with kimono, but I'm happy to say that they worked very well. They also looked great with kimono!

I didn't take any photos without haori, but underneath I wore my dusty pink bamboo obi with two different obijime. Haneri is a greyish color, so it matched quite nicely too. I couldn't go anywhere without my gloves of course, because no winter kimono outfit is completed without a pair of long gloves! I wore the same haori as when I went to a Christmas Market, but that's because I only have one vintage kimono. OH NO! It means I'll have to go shopping for more! :P

I'm loving the cold weather right now, so if it's not raining, you'll be seeing a lot more kimono outfits from me! :)

~ Lyuba

Black, White and Matching

Hello Everyone,

It feels like I was changing my plans every hour this Saturday. First I was supposed to go to London with a friend, but then I remembered that my husband had contact lenses appointment and he needed me there for moral support lol. Then his work changed his schedule two times in two days, so he ended up having to stay up for a whole night to get back into night shift and asked me to cancel his appointment. By the time he told me that, my friend was already gone so I've decided to go to Cambridge instead.

I confess that I've been neglecting my modern kimono lately in favor of vintage sha pieces. This black and white ro komon was a lucky win on eBay a while back, but I just couldn't get around to wearing it. I paired it up with my pain-in-a-butt ro hikinuki obi after watching a video on youtube that finally showed me clearly one of the steps that I was missing. This gave me a perfect reason to wear my straw cloche. I thought it would be cute to wear one black and one white belts as two obijime and kept the obiage also white (not that I have much choice lol). Haneri is faint pink with black flowers to match the pink of my bag and the pink in the obi design.

Finally, for the matchy part. I see Yumi Yamamoto doing it pretty often, and I've always wanted to try matching kimono and tabi. I could actually do it this time because I just so happen to own some black and white striped tabi! I like the effect quite a lot, if only I didn't tie my kimono too short. What can I say, old habits die hard :)

Unfortunately this obi has a yellow fold line which can't be hidden. It's not visible very much in the photos, but it's pretty visible in real life. I am not sure that there is even a way to clean it either, since it's a silk obi.

And yes, I did wear tabi! I think it's maybe the third time this year..? :)

~ Lyuba

Hello Travelling Kimono - First Stop is Cambridge!

Hello Everyone,

I'm sure most of you have heard by now about the Sisterhood of Travelling Kimono project, but if you haven't than check out the link immediately! Basically one kimono will travel to many countries and to even more people, where each person will dress up in that kimono, post photos and pass it on to the next person. For the first round we have 40 people who signed up, so I'm estimating that it will take at least 2 years for kimono to make its rounds! How cool is that?

One of my kimono got chosen as the Travelling Kimono, so I had the privilege to start the journey. Last Saturday I went to Cambridge to check out The Search for Immortality: Tomb Treasures of Han China exhibit at one of the museums there, and thought it would be a perfect opportunity to wear the kimono. Plus the day was very pretty too, so extra double reason to wear my kimono!

I was talking to Naomi about what to coordinate this kimono with, and she had an image in her mind about me going for the sailor theme, since I've done several sailor themed coordinations  before. I though it was a great idea, and went with it. I don't know about you, but I felt all kinds of pressure, being the first one, AND doing the Travelling Kimono too! I don't envy all the participants because I can imagine they all will have similar thinking, and I'm really glad that I'm all done and over with it. :P

 The crazy concoction of an obi that you see there is my "easy" obi from hell, meaning it's not easy to wear at all! Since it's the only red obi I own, I was determined to wear it, so I've pre-folded it into a semblance of tsunodashi musubi. It didn't turn out as well as I wanted too, but I can live with that. Now that I know what didn't work, I'll take it apart and re-do the whole thing.

It was extremely hot that day, even more so because this kimono is lined. Yes, I wore a lined kimono in 25C weather! But it needed to be done, so that it could go on to its next stop. Thankfully the museum had AC, so I was very comfortable there.

Walking around Cambridge, we came across this pub/restaurant and I just had to take a photo with the sign! How cool is that? Even the surrounding area helped with supporting my theme! Of course the trashcans just added to the general greatness (NOT) lol, but I'm thinking if push comes to shove, I can bribe someone to photoshop them out.

Next stop for the Travelling Kimono is London!

~ Lyuba

I did wear kimono in May!

Hello Everyone,

I've been pretty silent on this blog because I've been pretty busy with various events. I did wear kimono though and here are some photos as proof!

First Hong and I went to the Golden Festival organized by the Cambridge Anglo Japanese Society at The Cambridge Union. I did a kimono talk there, and also sold some of my kimono.

Us, being extra fabulous selves. 

This guy was walking around, and we couldn't pass up an opportunity to dress him in kimono.

I wore my only sha kimono with my super adorable ro obi, which I never had an opportunity to wear until this moment.

We also participated in the Yozakura Party fashion show, which you can see here. I filmed the whole thing while Hong worked backstage making sure everything was nice and smooth going. I can't tell you how happy I was that she stayed and helped me, because saying it was CRAZY would be an understatement. THANK YOU HONG! Unfortunately I didn't realize that everyone will come out at the last minute, and took off the camera off the tripod. The second video is me filming while holding the camera. Had it stayed on the tripod, I could have just pressed the filming button and ran out there with everyone. Oh well :(

Kimono starts at around 4min mark. Logan (the guy in the green kimono), was EPIC! Hong and I are trying to get him to be our model now :) :) :)



Next we also went to the Camcon on May 12, where we were the dealers again and where I did a talk on kimono. I wore one of my favorite striped kimono with my newest obi. I call it Space Apple obi! I don't have any pictures of the back, but trust me when I say that the design looks like a space apple! :)

We saw several artists doing manga portraits, so we requested ours to be done too. The one on the right was done first, but we took one look at it and said it was too nice! So we requested an "evil" portrait too. :) I love them both and will frame them! I also asked one of the artists to decorate my Moo card box, and when Hong saw it she had to ask for her box to be decorated too!

Let me know what you think!

~ Lyuba

Exploring Cambridge as a Student

Hello Everyone,

On Monday I went to Cambridge to meet up with a new kimono person! She is a student at one of the colleges, so we walked around all the areas that I normally would not have an access too, or have a limited access. As always, to see all the photos from the day, please check out my Facebook page (and it would be great if you liked it too!)

I knew that Cambridge was beautiful, but seriously I didn't realize just HOW! The only thing that spoiled our fun was right when we were taking photos in the area below, and the security guard (or whatever they are called) told us that we are not allowed to take any commercial photos. #$%#&*@?!?!?!?! He refused to listed to us when we said that we were not taking any commercial photos, because we look like we dressed up specifically so we can take photos. Well no shit! We did dress up, but that doesn't mean the photos are commercial! So we decided not to argue with the idiot, and just left. After that, we made sure that there were not guards around when we were taking photos.

Japan Day in Cambridge 2012

Hello Everyone,

Today was my second annual venturing to the Japan Day in Cambridge. I knew that it was going on for a while, but apparently it was their 10th year today. The theme of this event was hope, since tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

As always, when I'm out to impress, everything will go wrong. It started out with my kimono not wanting to wear properly. Of course the problem was that it's too short, and I'm simply not used to wearing too short kimono in traditional way anymore. After two tries I've managed to get it to sit semi-nicely, but then the obi decided to act up. The obi I originally wanted to wear is extremely stiff, and guess needs to be in a special mood to sit on me properly, which unfortunately wasn't meant to be today. Instead of fighting with the obi for the third time, I just went with my plan B. Thankfully that obi was less temperamental, and everything worked out from the first try.

Japanese themed events in East Anglia

Hello Everyone, 


It might seem like there is never anything going on in East Anglia that is Japanese related, but it is not true. There are surprisingly a large amount of things happening, but I don't go to them mostly because of the traveling. Sure it's not far, but when there is no place to park... well there is no reason to go. And I can't even take Park and Ride because the events either happen on Sunday (when some P&R is not open), or late in the evenings (when P&R shuts down pretty early in the evening). 


However, there are two events that are happening in March that I think I will go too, and in hopes that some of my followers are local to East Anglia, I'm posting a call for anyone who would want to go there too and meet up with me. 


Too Kawaii: The Power of the Super Cute


When: March 9, 2012 (Friday)
Where: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Nowrich
Time: 11-4:30pm
Price: £10, booking essential and probably should be done ASAP, as spaces are limited. To book, call 01603 593199.
More information: Here and here. 

Japan Day 


When: March 10, 2012
Where: Kaetsu Educational & Cultural Centre, Cambridge. 
Time: 12:30
Price: Free
More information: Here. 


I've actually went to this event last year, and I'm interested to see how different this year will be. I can tell that they have a lot more things going on this year, so I'm hoping it will be a lot more fun too. 

Cambridge in Kimono January 2012

Hello Everyone,

Yesterday I went to Cambridge with my husband and friends. We didn't do much, other than walking around and enjoying the nice crisp weather. One good thing about UK is the weather, which most of the time is perfect for kimono wearing! I'm dreading the time when we get back to US and get something like.... NEW MEXICO or VEGAS! (Ok, maybe not, and I'm thinking the worst case scenario, but I really don't want to go to a place where it's HOT all the time).

The central element of this coordination was my reversible nagoya tsuke obi. I wore the bunny side not long ago, so yesterday I wanted to wear the Union Jack side. Originally I was going to pair it up with a different kimono, but, as it turned out, the juban sleeves were too long and so instead of changing the juban, I changed the kimono! :)

This vintage blue kimono is interesting because the lining of the sleeves is red, but lining at the bottom of kimono is yellow. Talk about fun. In order to play up the lining color at the bottom, I choose a mustard yellow obiage. The obijime are pretty plain, one is light pink, and another is off-white, but they are the ones I use when I want to put an obidome-brooch on, because once crisscrossed, they hold the brooch pretty well in place. I wish this shot was taken from the other side, because this obiage has some gorgeous embroidery, but it's not visible in this shot.

I also wore my favorite red boots which matched my new red gloves perfectly. I could have worn a red hat too (and I only have like 5 of them, if not more), but I felt that blue will be a better choice. The only thing I didn't want to really think about was the haneri, because I kept the same one. Maybe it could be better, but it also mean that I would need to sew on a new one. I kinda like this haneri, and want to wear it some more before I change it, so for now it will match everything, because I said so! :)

We came across this cute sofa in one of the dressing rooms, so of course I had to take photos! :)

My faithful pink Harajuku Lovers bag, which goes with me everywhere, because it has kimono girls on it! I don't even care if the color doesn't match. Kimono girls design matches EVERYTHING!

EPIC kimono shot! :)

I'm thinking I'll wear this obi again, with the kimono I originally intended to wear it, before sending it off to Florida. What do you think?

~ Lyuba

P.S. If you want to see all the photos from the day, like my Facebook page. I will be posting all of my kimono photos there from now on.