Yūzen

Originating in the 17th century, the technique became popular as both a way of subverting sumptuary laws on dress fabrics,[1] and also as a way to quickly produce kimono that appeared to be painted freehand with dyes.

[2] Miyazaki Yūzen's fan designs became so popular that a book called the yūzen-hiinagata was published in 1688, showing similar patterns applied to kosode (the predecessor of the kimono).

[3] First, a sketch is drawn freehand on the cloth or paper, using a black heat-labile ink made from dayflowers.

[3] The background is dyed by covering all of the already-dyed areas with additional resist pastes, then applying the background dye either with a brush (hiki-zome),[3] or by dipping the fabric in a vat of dye (ji-zome),[4] sometimes with additional shibori (tie-dye) patterning.

Instead of scrolling the cloth past an artist who decorated part of it at a time, the whole length was spread on a board.

A stencil for undyed paste was used to create skiamorphic white outlines between the areas of colour, making the finished kata-yūzen pattern resemble itome-yūzen.

In contrast, yūzen can feature a number of repeated applications of rice paste, with dye hand painted into certain areas before the resist is removed.

Famous designers, such as Hanae Mori, borrowed extensively from kimono patterns for their couturier collections.