If Wishes Were Plane Tickets
Oh mighty Textile Ranger! When you picked up and polished the magic thimble, we, the members of International Textile Fairies, Pixies, and Genies Local 42, became your loyal servants. We hereby grant you your wish for an extended, behind-the-scenes tour of the Kyoto Costume Institute!
An Official Flying Carpet will transport you straight into the Kyoto Costume Institute gallery, to see an exhibit, “Fashions of the 1830s”, created just for you. With magical instruments – a pair of white gloves and a magnifying glass – you will have powers beyond those of ordinary mortals. You will be allowed to touch these fragile garments and examine their details – the hand-sewn seams with their tiny stitches, the beaded reticules, the embroidered stockings.
When you are ready to leave the exhibit, we will lead you underground, to a treasury that will make Aladdin’s cave pale by comparison – the climate-controlled permanent collections area. There you will find room after room full of acid-free boxes. Others might be bored by these uniform gray stacks but we know you can imagine the wealth of colorful brocades, cut velvets, or delicate laces within. Four tireless assistants will be at your disposal to properly unpack any item that you wish to see, lay it out for your perusal, and repack it properly when you are ready. You have only to study the treasures and reap inspiration from their variety.
Since there are 12,000 items in the collection, we expect you may want to stay for weeks. In the evenings, experts in textile design and preservation will come to pay their respects and share their knowledge. You won’t even have to leave the Costume Institute to go to a hotel – you will be allowed to sleep in the institute’s library, surrounded by 16,000 documents that you can pick up for evening or middle-of-the-night reading sessions. What will you choose? 1890s design sketches by Worth? 1840s cotton dress print samples? Madame Monet’s laundry list?
We know that you won’t really care what you eat or even if you eat during this visit, but food will be brought in for you at regular intervals. It will be delicious.
Since your stay will be for as long as you like, you might even take a few days off from surveying these treasures to fly off on side trips, to gardens, temples, museums, and studios of Living National Treasures.
And when you are finally ready to start back home, your flying carpet will take you to the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Paris, for a perfect finishing touch to your trip!
Today’s Writing 101 prompt: If you could zoom through space in the speed of light, what place would you go to right now?
There are dozens of wilderness areas, textile museums, and art retreat centers I would love to visit, but most of them are places I feel competent enough to travel to on my own. I think I would have a hard time negotiating Kyoto, though, and even if I could get in to the Kyoto Costume Institute’s collection, I know the visit would not be long enough to suit me. So if any magical Textile Genies could grant me a travel wish, this would be it!
In case you don’t follow the British Museum, here’s another bunch of textiles that would be fun to paw through: http://blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/06/02/a-new-look-at-ancient-egyptian-textiles/
Sometimes I am really glad that what I like is something that doesn’t last well – if I was (were?) into pottery or sculpture, I would have so much more to have to keep up with!
Thanks for the link!
Sounds a bit like information overload to me, actually 😉 But then I get that just seeing the weaving in your header, or browsing Pinterest, I have so many things I want to try and so little yarn! 😉
I’m sure I would get overloaded quickly too. But I would love to see the actual garments, without having to earn actual textile conservator credentials ahead of time. Just be whisked in like some sort of superstar.
is the Kyoto institue the one that put out the big pink double volume book of costume thats about the size and wieght of a small tombstone?
There’s a double volume set?!!! I have a single-volume book on the Kyoto Institute, published by Taschen. It is gorgeous, and many of those images are now in the digital archive on their website. But if there is another set out there, I better start looking!
this is the one I’ve got
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fashion-History-Century-Taschen-Anniversary/dp/3822827630/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401899873&sr=1-3-spell&keywords=fashion+kyoto+insitiute
wieghs a ton
Okay, I can calm down. I think that is the same book – mine is from 2000 – they must have re-issued it in 2006. It is one of my favorites.
You sure do know how to rock a fantasy! I’m fascinated with the thought that went into this choice!
My first reaction was just to pick one of my favorite places that I go all the time – then I thought, I should pick somewhere I would never go without a lot of knowledgeable support – and them more and more outlandish wishes popped up. It was fun!
Wow!
When the genies appear, I will take you along if you wish! 🙂
Packed and ready……………………………………………..
Once u get airborne just make a quick stop and pick me up! This is one fantasy I do not wish to miss!
Okay, I will be so glad to take you along! Here’s what we will have to do! We will have to add on a few more days so that within our planned schedule, we can also have some time to process what we are seeing – some nights we will each briefly share which item in that day’s viewing meant the most to us and why, other days we will take some time to work in our art journals to try to capture all the ideas we are getting! And we might have to include some days for shopping…
Clicked on the link and Kyoto had photo of a bustle; striped red and creme with a plaid (I think. It switches n I cant get back) muted purple n red. Beautiful! I moaned just a little. Determined to find the dress on the site. Wish me luck. Thanks for your blog.