Embassy Events

Keeper of the Asian department and curator of Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk at the V&A, Anna Jackson, will be in conversation with Kimono designer Jotaro Saito, who joined from Japan. The two spoke about the exhibition, how they met, and about Jotaro's conviction that the kimono is an everyday object of fashion that fits into modern life.

Jotaro Saito is a kimono designer and textile artist born in Kyoto to a family of textile dyeing artists. He has spent his career exploring the kimono as a fashion item for the modern age, matching the spaces we inhibit and ways that we live. Taking inspiration from the ‘street’, Saito’s collections are regularly shown at Tokyo Fashion Week and are still made using the traditional and time-consuming method of hand-drawn yuzen dyeing.

Anna Jackson is Keeper of the Asian Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum. A specialist in Japanese textiles and dress, she has written widely on the subject and is the curator of the exhibition Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk and editor of the accompanying publication. Her other major research interest is the cultural relationship between Asia and Europe, and in 2004 she was co-curator of Encounters: the Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800.