1973

Woman's Ensemble: Dress and Jacket

During the early 1970s Japanese college students and working women favored mid-calf to ankle-length peasant-style dresses. Kansai's version is daringly bare but can be covered up with a short, full-sleeved jacket that buttons along the left shoulder and down the side in a style associated with traditional Chinese dress. (Buttoning on the left, however, was considered by the Chinese to be "the fashion of barbarians.") The ensemble is decorated with Kansai's name written in script and scattered lotus flowers in punch needle embroidery known as bunka, a play on the name of the renowned Bunka Fashion College from which Kansai graduated in 1967.