Kimono Coat

Iida & Co./Takashimaya

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The kimono and the bamboo pattern are principal signifiers of Japan in the West. The adaptation of a theater coat from the silhouette of the kimono accommodates styles and needs of the Western market but also retains close identification with Japanese sources. By 1900, exoticism was customarily accompanied by reductivism, accepting and exacerbating the potential of Asian dress for modernism. This theater coat was published in the January-March 1900 issue of the fashion magazine, The Delineator.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art