Shibori | 絞り
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Shibori is a common form of adding details or patterns to kimonos. The meaning of the word is tie dye, but the actual process is much more intricate than tie dye processes found outside Japan.
Intricate shibori detailing of a bamboo fence, which is part of a design on a houmongi.
If you purchase a bunch of shibori items, you're bound to find little strings that were used to hold each piece together. Outside Japan, tie dye is usually done in larger pieces, such as tying a rope around two or three parts of a t-shrt, but many shibori items will have hundreds, if not thousands of individual spots that are tied.
This is a very, very time consuming process, and can take dozens of hours to complete, if a kimono is fully tied together.
Sometimes, shibori is used as simple accenting to pieces, such as this black haori, which uses white spots to form a river.
On the other hand, the shibori process can be used for much larger detailing, such as this white kimono with orange squares.
One interesting thing to note about this kimono is there are shibori patterns inside shibori patterns.
As it is oftentimes hard to see what is genuine shibori or not when looking at pictures online, you may accidentally purchase faux shibori instead of genuine shibori items. One method to determine if an item is genuine or not is by looking at the different patterns withing the dyed sections. While this semi-randomness can be copied by modern computers and printers, kimono designers usually don't go through the hassle to make fake seem genuine.
Take a peek at the different red squares and you'll see that each one is quite unique.
This piece combined modern inkjet printing with genuine shibori squares. You can see the texture around each square.
The Tsuji ga Hana technique, which was lost to time but replicated during the middle of the 20th century (the original technique is still unknown), is a beautiful, yet oft-simulated design. Due to the intricate and intense process, Tsuji ga Hana patterns are known to age stain fairly quickly. Thus, age stain avoidance adds to the quantity of faux tsujigahana patterns, such as this one:
If you look closely, you'll see that the fabric is smooth. Actual tsujigahana flowers will usually be surrounded and filled by many holes and a lot of texture.
Here's an example of holes and texture that are leftovers from the dyeing process.
This is from a polyester kimono with fake shibori kanoko patterns. You can tell it's fake because the texture doesn't line up with the spots. This has become somewhat common since the 1990s, as people want the texture but don't want to spend the additional thousand dollars or so to get the real article.
We take meticulous care to ensure each item is listed as being genuine shibori or not. Make sure to do your due diligence when purchasing shibori items online.
