These three garments show Japanese influences on Western fashion design. The first, Claire McCardell’s evening dress [Fig. 4], suggests Chinese influences in textile, pleating, and color and Japanese influences in the wide sash and columnar silhouette. Thea Porter’s garment [Fig. 5] hints at North African influences along with Japanese. The wide sash and long, draping sleeves suggest connections to the Japanese kimono. In the third example [Fig. 6], American fashion designer Marc Jacobs uses bold colors and geometric patterns that can be linked back to oriental design aesthetics [Fig. 7]. He combines the very American or Western shirt dress and collar with the Eastern silk fabric and Japanese wrap around the waist. The wrap resembles the traditional wraps around Japanese kimonos, and the flat silhouette of the collared shirt also lends itself to a design similar to that of the kimono. Jacobs, like many other fashion designers, has taken specific elements of past movements and cultural influences and incorporated them into his own design aesthetics as interpretations of the past and present.
