A new exhibition at the Museum of
Fashion in Gorizia, the northeastern Italian town bordering
Slovenia, highlights the influence that the Western world had on
Japan's iconic kimono in the first half of the 20th century.
The show, titled "Occidentalism: Modernity and Western Art in
Kimonos", features 40 pieces produced in Japan between 1900 and
the 1940s that reflect the Japanese Empire's desire to
westernise the country.
The exhibition opens on November 21 and runs through March
17.
Curated by Raffaella Sgubin with Lydia Manavello and Roberta
Orsi Landini, it features classic designs alongside colourful
examples that recall Cubism, Futurism, and other European art
movements.
Also on display is a singular kimono that celebrates the
tripartite pact between Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo in 1940, where
an Italian flag is partially hidden inside the seams among
abundant rising sun and swastika motifs.
Orsi Landini said the garments on display are refined and
were made for the middle to upper classes and not for export.
"They could have been appreciated by cultured people or by
those who wished to appear in step with the times," she said.
The pieces on display, together with prints, obi sashes,
illustrations, and magazines, are all from the Italian
collection Manavell.
The Fruili Venezia Giulia regional board of cultural heritage
(ERPAC), where co-curator Sgubin serves as director of the
museums and historical archives service, proposed the
exhibition.
"The Museum of Fashion in Gorizia is one of the few museums
in Italy dedicated to fashion, and now it is also the first in
Italy to look into a particular section of the art, offering the
public an unprecedented insight into cultural history," Sgubin
said.
The first half of the 20th century is one of the most complex
in Japanese history, as it passed from a feudal state to a world
superpower, culminating in the Second World War.
Although in the West the kimono is symbolic of a refined and
exotic Japan, few know that the majority of kimonos produced
during the first half of the 20th century, which used a method
known as meisen, had prints in a wild kaleidoscope of colours,
inspired by avant garde art movements, history or technology.
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