### id263565579 stage costumes are exaggerated > Just like today's world of actors and entertainers, kabuki stars wore designer fashion, and their stage outfits were elaborate costume depictions of the haute couture of the day. Being stage costumes, they had to be larger-than-life versions of reality, to allow people at the back of the theatre to see the designs clearly. This fashion of wider *obi* was picked up by townswomen, which meant that kabuki actors had to wear even wider *obi*, which resulted in women wearing even wider *obi*, et cetera, until women of the middle Edo Period were wearing foot-wide obi. The expanding dimensions of the sleeves and *obi* also prompted a lengthening of the *kosode* as well, so that the hem trailed behind the wearer like a train, harkening back to the decadent *juunihitoe* while also giving kimono makers more area to embellish--especially necessary now that the wide *obi* was covering so much of the middle of the *kosode*, prompting more attention to be paid to decorating the bottom half, rather than painting a large-scale continuous pattern over the shoulder and sweeping down to the hem. - [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fr21ht732ehqarea8kvg8e4h) - [[History of Kimino in the Edo Period by Katie Armstrong#id263565579 stage costumes are exaggerated|View in Vault]] - [n] #storystem/fic I can see a protagonist of a story needing to have this explained to him.