2 Staycation Outfits

Jellycat bag + why convertible yukatas don’t work

Hello from a tranquil moment during my staycation (which is a bit like a workcation as I’ve been doing work on and off the whole time). My husband and I have decided that it’s time to use the points/status that we got from our wedding banquet and just take a few staycations since a long overseas break doesn’t look likely this year.

This break, I wore two outfits that I wanted to note down!

The first is this crop top with a modernised mamianqun. This mamianqun uses a button and buckle system to fasten. At first, I thought that was a lot more convenient compared to the traditional tie/string method, but this time, I noticed a flaw. Wit strings, you can always adjust the skirt to be looser or tighter (within reason, if your front panels start to skew or it looks off, then the skirt really just is not fitting). But with a button and buckle, any change in body results in the skirt fitting awkwardly, which is what I felt yesterday. I still love this skirt, but I’m now thinking of whether another button needs to be added - that might cause trouble with the buckle, though! Hmmm

And on a happy now, my friend got me this jellycat-inspired bag and it makes me so happy to see its smiling face!

The second outfit is one that I bought one or two months back but haven’t had the time to wear and evaluate. It is essentially a convertible yukata - a dress is the base and you put on the yukata top half + tie the obi to make it into a yukata.

I actually quite like the dress, it’s free size (tie at the waist adjust sizes! Very useful) and comfortable to wear. I like the relaxed silhouette, which I was a bit surprised at because normally anything too relaxed just drowns me due to my height.

The yukata part, however, was a fail. The first is the skirt area - while the dress put in the traditional Yukata/kimono flap, the cinch at the waist skews the flap so it’s completely off. The second is the body line - you can see that the obi creates lots of wrinkles on the yukata, and the body line curves in rather than being a straight line down, if that makes sense. When I went back to the product page, it mentioned needed towels to help pad the body of the body line was not ideal, which is basically the traditional practice when wearing kimono.

The obi was also not very easy to wear. I remembered that my most difficult part of wearing yukata and kimono in general was tying the obi, rather than putting the kimono on. This set came without the traditional obi accessories, like the obi-ita, which helps the obi sit smoothly. For such a soft hanhaba obi, an obi ita would probably help make the obi-tying an easier process.

So if I need towels to pad out the body line and the obi isn’t easier to put on, then I don’t think the convertible yukata is easier to put on. In fact it is harder, because I haven’t figured out how to get the skirt panel straight and keep body line straight (maybe if I used another kimono string to tie).

At the moment, I’ll probably just wear this as a dress and think if there’s anything else I can do for the kimono top.

If you made it this far, thank you for listening to me ramble about this! And let me know if you have any Accor hotels that you like for staycation because I am def looking for inspiration.