During this past week, I’ve released my first set of male clothing in my little Japanese style. It is a quite simple one (black and white, with red sash and collar), however, from the echoes I got so far, it made its buyers happy, so this keeps my spirits high about what I do. Here’s a fact I must admit… I had much, much fun in designing it, because it made me look up for some bit of information first, and this way I was able to learn a few interesting historical things. It reminded me of many good moments, a few years ago, and of countless hours spent on studying history. I had forgotten how good that felt, I think.

If I started with this one, it’s for a reason though: it seemed a good model to try my hand at male clothing, which I never had done yet, and also at something different than the usual kimono. Funnily enough, the outfit itself was actually of Chinese inspiration – I took example from a real outfit that was used during the Asuka era, and at that time it was indeed much inspired from Chinese clothing. I’m not sure about this yet, but given its style, I think it’s actually a Court type of clothing. I have no idea if the main color I used marks a high or low ranking though, and this bothers me a bit, but in all honesty, I think that most users in Second Life will probably not mind this little detail.

I plan on working on a female model from the Jomon era next, although, if I want to really stay in the historical fashion, I’ll have to craft a white only model (dyeing processes were bad at that time, so clothes were mostly white). The cut seems simple, but the sash can be lots of fun to work on, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve also taken upon myself to add a little historical note to these outfits, not to play the know-it-all, but mainly because I have the feeling that most people (just like myself before I looked up to discover how these clothing models were exactly made!) will think of “Japanese clothing” as “simple kimono”, while in fact it can be extremely vast, depending on the era. I have wet dreams of crafting a junihito kimono (twelve layers of clothing!), but this seems pretty hard to do, unfortunately, so this will be for when I have more experience only, and more desire to play with prims. It sure looks so nice… I wonder if one day I’ll have enough skill to make one?