Kimono de Jack UK Orian Showdown at Hyper Japan Christmas 2012

Photo by Stefan Dahl

I finally was able to go to Hyper Japan again! I missed the spring one because of some engineering works on the Central line which would have put me at 3 hours one way journey, so I was going to do my best to not miss this one.

The theme for our Kimono de Jack meet up was Oiran Showdown, where each one of us dressed up as our interpretation of oiran from Sakuran. I've been dying to wear this orange dance hikizuri that Hong has, so I used this opportunity to beg her to let me borrow it :) At first I was going to do something with my hair, like make some oiran-style hair bows, but at the end I didn't want to bother with it all and decided to go with my normal hair. Instead, I've also borrowed a kitsune mask from Hong and used it as my hair accessory.

Photo by April

Photo by Stefan Dahl

Photo by April. 

Positively Scandalous or Oiran Style photo shoot

For a few month now, Hong and I were talking about doing a kimono photo shoot with some of her kimono that I've been dying to wear. You know, if I can't own them then I can at least experience wearing them right? This week we were finally able to get together and do a photo shoot!

I picked her up from Eppings and we drove back to my house, where I promptly started applying my makeup. I have to admit that I WAS going for the white(ish) face because I've been dying to give it a try. The day before I looked up oiran makeup and as far as I could tell, there is no difference in the makeup between oiran and geisha. If there is, I don't know about it and can't tell.

So first we did a regular furisode photo shoot, but I will post it tomorrow because today I'm very excited about my super scandalous oiran photos! Yup, we sure went there. Semi-naughty kimono photo shoot, but without connecting it to geisha. We were going for a stylized oiran look with the obi tied up front. The rest of stuff are for pure naughtiness, as I don't think oiran ever wore their kimono that way.

Oh yeah, some of you might wander who oiran were. Well, I'm not an expert by any means, but they were basically high class courtesans in Japan.  Yup, totally entitled to some naughtiness so erotic kimono photos are pretty appropriate to them.

The location left lots to be desired (my backyard) but I still love the photos. I think they turned out very well considering what we had to work with, and who we had to fight for the peace of shooting. I think I (gently) kicked my kitties about 100 times trying to get them out of the photos.