Stitch-up: online sewing community at war over cultural appropriation
Boom in home-made clothes-making hides bitter divisions about size inclusivity, race and if a kimono should be called a jacket
Last week, popular fashion patternmaker Papercut Patterns posted a short video on Instagram of one of their patterns being reprinted. The clip was just long enough to see the name of the pattern, the Kochi jacket, passing through the rollers.
Three weeks ago, that pattern had a different name. The square-cut short jacket, with optional side ties, was released in June 2017 with the name Kochi Kimono. For 18 months, amateur sewers — most prefer the term “sewist”, for reasons of homonym — had been making their own versions and sharing the results on Instagram tagged with #Kochikimono.