PHOTOGRAPHS: © VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM LONDON, COURTESY OF THE KHALILI COLLECTION,COURTESY OF ROWAN HISAYO BUCHANAN, © RIJKSMUSEUM, COURTESY OF THE JOSHIBI ART MUSEUM
April 2020 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | 131Take a stroll around central London and you’re bound
to spot one of English Heritage’s iconic blue plaques,
which mark the former homes of famous novelists,
artists and all manner of changemakers. Each year, a
handful of new names are announced, but in 2020 all
of the commemorative signs will be dedicated to
women for the first time since the scheme began.
There’s the Hampstead property of the sculptor
Barbara Hepworth, the Westminster headquarters of
two major suffragette organisations, and the Cam-
den townhouse that once belonged to Helen
Gwynne-Vaughan. A little-known figure
who lived an extraordinary life, Gwynne-
Vaughan shunned the traditional route of
a Victorian debutante to become a trail-
blazing scientist and professor of botany,
then went on to head the women’s branch of
the British Army at the outbreak of World War II.
Thrillingly, the list is completed by two female
s p i e s. T h e fi r s t i s N o o r I n a y a t K h a n , a n I n d i a n p r i n c e s s
who was recruited by British intelligence, captured
in France while on a government mission and died in
Dachau concentration camp in 1944 aged 30. The
second, Christine Granville, was a Polish-born secret
agent who won numerous military honours for her
bravery and was the inspiration for several heroines in
Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, including the double
agent Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale.
At present, only a minority of blue plaques are dedi-
cated to women, making this year’s crop all the more
valuable in unearthing forgotten female histories and
firing the imaginations of generations to come.
English Heritage’s new collection of blue plaques will be
announced on 8 March.CULTURE
By CATRIONA GRAY
Who’s that girl?
An eye-catching red kimono design
created by Jean Paul Gaultier for
Madonna’s music video ‘Nothing Really
Matters’ appears in the V&A show.
Our limited-edition cover, exclusively
available at the museum shop, features
an image originally shot for a 1999
issue of Bazaar, paying tribute to that
remarkable collaboration.patterns of your kimono matched the season: maple leaf for autumn,
plum blossom for winter, and so on. This unfortunate woman is out
of season and out of place.
Later, I will realise that the garment my grandfather was wearing
was also a kimono – though it had no seasonal motif. On the rare
occasions we go out, he will, with pain and effort, ease into beige
trousers and a polo shirt. But in the apartment, he wears his yukata- a thin, unlined kimono, cotton not silk. He wears it over loose
pyjamas. It is not chosen for fashion or to impress, but because it is
comfortable and light. Heart surgery has left him tired. This kimono
will never be exhibited. Yet, it feels closest to the meaning of the
term. Break down the parts of kimono and you get wearing
plus thing. It’s a simple word, suited to his humble garment. Now
he is gone, his bones are no longer able to hold
up any fabric. In his funeral portrait, he is
wearing a suit, but a decade after his death, I
long to loop the yukata’s indigo cloth around
my hands.
The reason these kimono memories have
flown into my head is that, this spring, there is
an exhibition coming to the V&A that promises
t o s h o w u s t h e g a r m e n t f r o m 16 6 0 t o t h e p r e s e n t
day. I’m intrigued by the catalogue. It describes
the ways kimono allowed wearers to display
their stories: who they were, what they aspired
to, the rules they flouted and the lines they toed.
There’s one story about a 17th-century mer-
chant who had his lands and houses confiscated
by the shogun due to his wife’s inappropriately
extravagant kimono. I learn that in the Edo
period, there was a fashion for red undergar-
ments, and that the bridal headgear from the
same era was called a horn-concealer, owing to
the popular belief that after marriage, the bride
would hide her horns of jealousy to be a good wife. Samuel Pepys,
eyewitness to the Great Fire of London, was the owner of a kimono-
esque garment. David Bowie was inspired by
Japanese dress when designing the clothes
for his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, and went so
far as to learn how to apply make-up under
the guidance of a kabuki actor.
I think back to that flock of cranes. I
realise it may have been a bridal uchikake –
an exquisitely decorated outer kimono worn
during the wedding banquet. After guessing
this, it seems suddenly fragile. I imagine a
girl, her heart still new, carried by these birds
into her future.
I think of my grandfather at the end of his
life, his hands jittering with Parkinson’s, the
words shaking out of his throat. I think that
there must have been a final time his long
brown arms tucked themselves into indigo
blue. I wonder if he knew it was the last.
I will go to the show. I will admire the
kimono, the wood-block prints, the hair
combs and paintings. I will look and look. I doubt
I’ll be able to touch. I hope to glimpse the lives
that once filled silk and cotton.
‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ is at the V&A (www.
vam. ac.uk) from 29 Febr uar y to 21 June.
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Above:
Kobayakawa
Kiyoshi’s ‘Kaidan
(Staircase)’. Right:
Bazaar’s V&A
limited-edition cover