Iki (aesthetic)

• Japanese: 粋 (iki, sui)

Iki was one of the dominant aesthetics in popular fashion in the city of Edo. Though notoriously difficult to define, iki has been characterized as a subtle, restrained, refinement and elegance.

Though in the early 17th century bright, flashy designs in bold colors and with gold or other precious accents were the dominant fashion among those who could afford it, by the mid-to-late 18th century, browns, greys, and navy blue were the most popular. This was in part influenced by the shogunate's sumptuary regulations, which banned commoners from wearing any silk garment of higher quality than tsumugi (a silk pongee), and which encouraged maintaining appearances appropriate to one's station - in the case of commoners, particularly merchants, this was an officially rather low station. Yet, within these limitations, aesthetics and fashion evolved in their own direction; the government cannot control taste. Banned from wearing brighter colors in public, many commoners took to hiding these bold designs in the inner linings of their robes, or on inner layers; thus, a bit of bright color peeking out from under the gray or brown overrobe, or hints of color woven into the gray or brown, became some of the key ways in which people demonstrated restrained, refined, fashion sense.

One particularly important feature of the emergence of popular fashion in the Edo period is that courtesans of the Yoshiwara, and actors of the kabuki stage became the chief trendsetters, with even the elites taking their fashion cues from these extremely low-culture, popular culture, figures. This marks a significant change from trends throughout previous periods, in which commoners emulated the style of elites, in order to show themselves to be cultured, refined, high-class. The growth of popular fashion was helped along considerably by pattern books, called hiinagata bon, which displayed styles and designs from which customers could then custom order fabric or readymade garments, and from which merchants could see what their competition was producing, and what was popular.

The dominant fashion aesthetic in Kamigata (the Kyoto-Osaka region) in the Edo period had different features, and was called sui, rather than iki, though it was written with the same kanji character.

References

• Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility, Cambridge University Press (2005), 245-285.