きもの

Kimono

Did you know that the Japanese traditional clothing called Kimono is very ecological? The fabric used for the dresses that we wear today is cut into shapes fitting to our curvy bodies, but the fabric used for making the Japanese kimono is cut into mostly simple rectangular shapes. Therefore, once the kimono is un-sewn, it goes back to pieces of nice rectangle shaped fabric. Because of that, they can be easily recycled and reused for some other purposes. How “green” is that!

From the olden days, Japanese people have been very good about reusing the kimono fabric for making many different things such as zabuton cushions, haori jackets, children’s small kimonos, etc. After all the main parts are used, people would even make toys out of the small leftovers.