When a bride starts daydreaming about her wedding morning, she envisions the entire scene one element at a time. And when she starts putting the pieces together, they come together one element at a time as well. Typically, she may start with the flowers, then linens, to set the entire mood and feel of the day. Then finally she circles back to what she and her bridesmaids will wear while getting ready. This last decision has a bigger impact than most people think, because those photos are the ones she (and her family) will turn back to again and again.
We know the importance of expression on your wedding, so at KIM+ONO, we want to give you options you can easily fall in love with (for now, and always). We build our wedding kimono palette around four earth tones: ivory, cream blush, fern, and sepia rose. None of them are wedding-only colors, of course. And each one is pulled straight from Mother Nature herself, which means the kimono robe a bridesmaid wears at 8 a.m. while getting for her best friend’s summer wedding day can still be the perfect match for her closet the following October.
Ivory is the starting point for most bridal parties, and it's the one we see most often paired with our Printed Silk Kimono Robe, where the floral kimono robe prints are hand-sketched and watercolored before they're ever printed onto fabric. Bridesmaids photographed in matching ivory robes look like a family (which is how your bridal party feels to you!). The ivory gives seamless cohesion with the bride, is a beautiful complement to every skin tone, and serves as a classic silk look for years after the wedding.
Cream blush sits one shade warmer, and it's where we point brides who want color in the photos without pulling focus. Our Washable Silk Kimono Robe, made from 22mm 100% Grade 6A Raw Mulberry Silk, holds that cream blush tone with more depth than a thinner fabric could manage. It's also the practical choice for a bride who wants her bridesmaids to keep wearing the robe past the wedding weekend, since it machine washes on a delicate cycle and skips the dry cleaner trips that pure silk usually requires. A robe that can handle real laundry days is a robe that your bridal crew will wear again and again.
Photo by Ashley Streff
Fern is the palette's nod to the botanical sourcing behind the whole collection, and it shows up most in our Charmeuse Kimono Robe. The fabric is a charmeuse polyester fibre, lightweight with a fluid drape. Fern inspires the feeling of growth. Whether it’s the color fern (a shade of green), or the symbol of the cherry blossom, the ephemerality of nature lives in every kimono robe. In Japanese and Chinese tradition, cherry blossoms are tied to the idea that beauty is worth honoring because it doesn't last forever. A wedding morning holds that same fleeting quality, and is something to cherish, not hold too tightly.
Photo by Ashley Streff
Sepia rose is the deepest tone in the palette, and can be found in both our Printed Silk and Charmeuse Collections. No two sepia rose robes are exactly alike, which makes it an inspired choice for a bride who wants to stand apart from her bridal party, without breaking from the palette.
Color is only half of what makes these robes feel bridal. The other half is in the kimono layers themselves. Every KIM+ONO robe includes a removable waist tie and inner ties, so the silhouette can be loosened over a slip for getting-ready photos or cinched for a more finished look later in the day. French seam finishes and side slits at the hem keep the layering clean instead of bulky, which matters when five bridesmaids are standing in a row for a photo and the line of robes needs to look uniform without looking identical. For a bride who wants a slightly heavier option for her own layering, our Washable Twill Kimono Robe, cut from a sandwashed silk twill, gives the same removable-tie structure with a bit more body to the fabric.
For brides who want more structure than a standard robe, our Charmeuse Kimono Wrap adds velvet trim, a double lining, and in-seam pockets, a detail that comes in handy on a wedding morning when someone needs somewhere to put a phone down. The wrap, with its double lining, feels more weighty than a kimono robe, which can be a beautiful choice for cooler climates.
The palette also solves a real planning problem: what to actually give the bridal party as a thank you gift. Most of our brides aren't buying these robes only for themselves. They're buying six or eight of the same robe in the same color as a gift, which is why we built our Furoshiki Gift Wrap service around exactly this experience, hand-tying each robe in a floral kerchief scarf and packing it in a KIM+ONO box with a custom note card. A bridesmaid gift that your party can wear again and again becomes a meaningful living heirloom for her.
What makes this palette function as an investment instead of a one-day purchase is that none of the four colors are reactive to bridal trends. Earth tones don't cycle out the way seasonal wedding colors do, so a bridesmaid who wears fern or cream blush in July can still feel confident in that same robe a few years later. That's the reasoning behind building the palette from botanicals instead of whatever color is trending that wedding season: a robe tied to a flower or a leaf doesn't expire when the trend cycle moves on.
Our co-founders, sisters Renee and Tiffany Tam, pulled together this palette the way they approach every collection, by starting with what colors could be loved for a lifetime. When a wedding robe gets worn on the big day and all the small days after, it becomes imbued with all the meaningful moments of your life. And that’s our biggest wish for your wedding kimono robe.
