Ikebana, Evan Kinori, and Nanamica
22.844
Ikebana
At 22.844, I started my Saturday with an Ikebana class.
The instructor gave a brief introduction on the history of Japanese flower arrangement (the details of which I don’t really recall), but the general idea is that Buddhism and the tea ceremony gave meaning to an otherwise unstructured activity used for temple offerings.
The structure of the arrangement follows the above comprised of three components: Shin, Soe, and Hikae. Generally this style of arrangement is called Sogetsu and uses either a tall vase or a wide plate (we used a plate).
The Shin is typically twice the radius of the plate, and the Soe about 70% the length of the Shin.
Hikae is made up of some number of flowers, usually either (1, 3, 5) or (2, 4, 6).
All three components are placed on to a pin holder (which is best masked by placing some more miscellaneous plants on the holder).
Senyo (the instructor) picked up all the flowers used in the class from the flower district on 28th street between 6th and 7th avenue. I’ll be heading there (hopefully some time this month) to find some tulips for my place.
Evan Kinori
After the class I headed to Evan Kinori’s exhibition one: apple, elm & cotton at JDJ gallery. The space was beautifully set up featuring Evan Kinori’s debut furniture collection as well as a rack of clothes. They had a small turntable setup, a huge center piece table, a bed, and some miscellaneous handmade? cups and plates. Five fully styled fits were hanging from the wall as well, mostly layered shirt combos with either their work jacket or a blazer.
I tried to read some articles about Evan Kinori before visiting the exhibition— his general philosophy seems to be that customers are not intended to buy his garments very often. Each garment is crafted in a limited, hand-numbered run. If you have a plate that is really expensive, but its your favorite plate and you eat off of it every day, that justifies the quality and the price. Same can be said here for his pieces (but yeah, everything was pretty expensive).
I tried on the Butcher Linen work jacket, some shorts, and a pair of elastic? pants. I’m typically not a huge fan of warm tones and I was not quite sure if I enjoyed the materials that were used (one of the employees informed me that for the work jacket, a wash or even just a tumble dry would quickly soften the fabric and make it really soft; when I tried it on it seemed somewhat rough), but it was very clear that the quality of the garments was phenomenal.
I didn’t end up buying anything, but I can understand why customers of Evan were buying his clothes season after season (even though this is not what he intended haha).
Nanamica
Ever since I visited the Fukuoka store last June, Nanamica has been a brand thats been on the top of my wishlist. Specifically, Nanamica places a lot of emphasis on their materials— a lot of their stuff is quite outdoorsy or has some gore tex elements, wind, rain, stuff of that nature is taken into heavy consideration.
I originally visited the store to take a second look at their club jacket in gray (I’m currently addicted to finding my next blazer. Right now I wear a very large free-size blazer from Sillage picked up from the Blue in Green store), but I actually ended up leaving the store with a pair of their light easy shorts. I also considered getting their button down wind shirt and wanted to checkout out some oversized tees, but decided to keep that for a future visit (my closet is already full of button downs, albeit most of them are made of thicker fabrics and can’t be worn during the warmer spring summer months. I was also running late to a dinner).
One thing I love about the Nanamica store is that the employees do a funny job with their marketing. Every couple days or so they upload videos of the employees either performing in silly skits or wearing the clothes doing fit pics around their store front or at stores in the area (such as at Dashwood Books).
If our interests align, send me a message! You can also find me on instagram @ktaetaetaetae. I share drawings and occasionally other things like pickups, music, or photos I’ve taken.