Reviews for Kimonos

The average rating for Kimonos based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-02-26 00:00:00 Susann Sagvand I love kimono, I don't love this book. It has lots of photos - they are not stunning - kind of atmospheric. It has text, it was not very informative. I am not sure that some of the information is correct. It is fun to see photos of kimono but for the collector it doesn't offer much - I am glad I got it since it was cheap and it is fun to glance at now and then.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-02-19 00:00:00 Stefan Ingelsen Reread in 2020 - my initial impression still stands. It's nice to flip through the pages, and then look at my shelves to see what else I have on the subject. Original review: What I liked about this book was the rich assortment of photos of how kimonos are worn by ordinary people in Japan today - not in formal shots but in candid street shots (sometimes a bit too candid, perhaps, since they could were quite blurred in more of a low-quality sort of way than an artistic) and she also presents some nice vintage shots from times when kimonos were more of the basic garment for the Japanese people. The actual text was a bit more bland, mostly hammering in a few simple truths: the younger the woman wearing a kimono, the brighter the colours, and long sleeves are for the unmarried woman. And since the kimono is mostly worn for formal occasions the way to wear kimonos has been quite formalized too (which Milenovich makes quite clear she doesn't like) - but as can be seen in The New Kimono: From Vintage Style to Everyday Chic this isn't the only truth. Another slight issue that sometimes the design of the book has been more important than the readability - some of the pages are actually quite hard to read with for example green text on a brown page It's not something to read to learn a lot of new stuff from, but nice all the same.