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When you hear the term, ‘Japanese traditional clothing’, what comes to your mind?

I suppose many of you would think of ‘Kimono’ first, but traditional clothes I am going to introduce today is ‘samue’.

I assume some of you have never heard of samue, but this was originally created as working clothes of Zen Buddhist monks developed from a combination of smock and work trouser to be worn over kimono. Nowadays it is no longer unique clothes of monks but staff of Japanese traditional restaurant or hotel sometimes use them the clothes as their uniform.  And some people even put them on as a room wear which match traditional lifestyle of Japan.

It must be hard to imagine how it would look like, so let me share an image with you here.

As you can see, this clothes is not designed to be a tight fit, but loose and relaxing so it is good for a room wear.

For samue clothing, a wide variety of fabric is used, ranging from cotton, linen and Japanese indigo dyeing to silk.  Generally speaking, easily washed fabrics are used for this particular clothes, so it is easy for you to wash at home, too (you have to be careful if it is made of silk though).

Now, the samue shop I would like to introduce today is a shop called Wasuian in Kiryu city, Gunma pref.  Needless to say, as they are a special samue shop, they are highly skilled and experienced in quality samue making.

You can also coordinate samue with scarf and sandal to complete a combination of ‘traditional and modern look’, too!  😉

They also sell ‘Jinbei’ clothes which is similar to samue, for example, very cool ones with dragon on the back like this.

Wasuian has shopping page in English to be able to receive order from overseas, so it is quite easy to order their product on the internet from overseas, too.

FYI, they deal with various sizes up to LLL so some of you who usually struggle to find the best size in Japan may be able to find your size here.

For details of these product, please use the link below:

Introduction page of the shop: Wasuian

Product page (English): http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/auc-wasuian/