Yumi Katsura to champion yuzen silk for more casual wear

photos: Fide Multimedia


For the last five years Japanese designer Yumi Katsura has championed the yuzen dyeing tradition with a special collection of wedding gowns and evening dresses using yuzen silk. The Japanese dyeing technique was developed in the middle of the Edo era (around 1700) and requires many fine manipulations.




 She has primarily used it for her wedding and evening gowns and even launched a Yuzen Collection dedicated to the dyed fabric. But come January, Katsura is planning to introduce more casual wear in the collection she presents in Paris during Couture Week. “Of course there will still be evening wear, but there will also be more cocktail dresses. I might even shock people and mix yuzen with jeans,” the veteran designer said through an interpreter, adding she still likes to experiment with design and use of material.




Since her first collection in 1964, Katsura has built a long and successful international career with her elaborate one-of-a-kind wedding gowns and has become known for her use of rich embellishment and luxurious fabrics.

Pursuing her experimentation with fabrics and materials she has, in recent years, presented a phosphorescent wedding gown that used fluorescent embroidery thread, and during Bangkok couture week , where she showcased last Friday a mini-retrospective of sorts with gowns from different collections, she also presented a kimono-inspired white coat that revealed an embroidered pattern when put under a fluorescent lighting.

As first published on ARTINFO.com