Founder Tomoko Inoue
The Founder’s Intent
My daughter who is studying abroad in New York once said:
“I really want to take my Kimono with me to America, but since I cannot wear a Kimono by myself, I will take my Yukata with me instead”.
A Yukata is generally considered as a ‘casual’ wear in Japan.
They are generally worn as sleep-wear or room-wear, while they are also marginally accepted to be worn at Summer Festivals (called ‘Natsu-Matsuri’) with night-stalls.
However, Yukatas are not suitable for formal parties or events.
I wanted to develop a new concept kimono. A kimono that is as beautiful as the traditional kimono, which my daughter can proudly wear at formal parties or events in New York.
Cars, microwaves and cellphones involve very complex engineering which we do not understand, yet they are easy to use and are used by majority of the people in this generation.
Likewise, I wanted to create a kimono which can be easily worn by anyone.
In some cases, the viewer is more pleased than the wearer.
I believe that the kimono is a folk costume that is admired and appreciated around the world.
The beautiful, easy-to-wear kimono fit® was developed by a professional wedding kimono-dresser, who is a veteran with many years of experience.
kimono fit® was born from our desire to create an ‘easy-to-wear, beautiful and enjoyable kimono’ for all the kimono-lovers across the world.
Our Brand History
kimono fit® was developed by Tomoko Inoue, who is a veteran in the field of kimono-dressing for weddings.
Long years of practice and experience is required to be able to beautifully dress a flat piece of kimono over a three-dimensional human-body.
Theconventional kimono dress requires multiple strings to suspend the kimono to hide wrinkles, and excess cloth were required to be hidden by way of folding. The art of ‘kimono folding’ is very similar to the ‘Origami’, which is a Japanese paper-folding art.
In conventional kimono, the rear-collar of a kimono is slightly pulled backwards to reveal the back side of your neck. However, while a person is walking or moving in the kimono, the rear side of the collar slowly tends to return to it’s original position.
Tomoko then thought, if a kimono is tailored from the start with a lower rear collar, then this problem can be avoided.
This was the initial thought behind the birth of the kimono fit®.
Daughter of the founder
Developing the ‘Idea’ into the “kimono fit®” brand
The initial 3D tailored kimono prototype was developed for my daughter who was studying abroad in the US.
For the first 5 years, this easy-to-wear kimono prototype was only being worn by 4 people, comprising of my daughter, my sister, Tomoko Inoue and myself.
However, by word-of-mouth, the kimono started getting some attention from our friends. Some of the comments we received were.‘I want to take a kimono with me to overseas, and be able to wear it by myself’. ‘I want to wear a kimono for my children’s Shichigosan festival (7-5-3 festival)’
This is when we felt that there were many other people who would also appreciate the concept of our ‘3D-kimono’. This had lead to our decision to officially create a brand for our product.
We started looking into developing the prototype further to improve quality, increase size variation for different body shapes for everyone to be able to beautifully wear our kimono.
We had over 1,300 people to wear our kimono, and based on their feedback, we continued to make adjustments to improve the kimono on a daily basis.
With the cooperation from 4 sewing and design professionals, we had spent 8 years to perfect our product to create kimono fit®.
World’s First Hybrid Sewing
Our Kimono fits more beautifully than the conventional kimono, and is suitable for many different body types. The secret behind this lies within our sewing technique.
All kimonos of kimono fit® are tailor-made via a hybrid-style semi-order.
Hybrid-style sewing first involves fabricating a high-grade ready-to-wear ‘prêt-à-porter’ kimono, which is then tailored by our Japanese sewing craftsman to suit the customer’s height.
Through these two processes, a kimono that fits each person's body is completed.