On The Eleventh Day of Fun I present… something that’s been requested numerous times over the past year! Looking at many months of examples it’s not exactly the easiest to pinpoint down who wears what and when, but I’ve tried to do my best to present it to you here.
The first thing to know is that there isn’t simply one way to do a pairing; many colors can be in season at a time and there’s no concrete way when it comes to pairing them together. For example, yellow and black is common in December, but it’s also common to see yellow and black paired with other colors during this time, so each color is valid in its own right and a group of maiko will always have colors that tie each other together. To explain it better, here’s a visual example of how everything’s added up:
Example image courtesy of Love_Child_Kyoto.
Number of Maiko: 10
Most Popular Color: Purple (6/10, all or some)
Most Popular Obi: Orange, Black, and Green (3 each)
Primary Color Pairings: Purple and Orange (Orange gains +1 from kimono)
The Monthly Breakdown
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
January
Primary Pairing Colors: Purple and Orange
Most Popular Pairings: Orange and Green
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
February
Primary Pairing Colors: Pinkish Purple and Black
Most Popular Pairings: Pink with Green for Juniors and Beige with Black for Seniors
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
March
Primary Pairing Colors: Purple and Orange
Most Popular Pairings: Purple with Green and Beige with Orange
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
April
Primary Pairing Colors: Orange and Black
Most Popular Pairings: Black for Seniors and Orange for Juniors
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
May
Primary Pairing Colors: Blue and Yellow
Most Popular Pairings: Blue with White for Seniors and Yellow with Green for Juniors
Image courtesy of Onihide-san.
June
Primary Pairing Colors: Purple and Blue
Most Popular Pairings: Purple with Beige for Seniors and Blue with Orange for Juniors
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
July
Primary Pairing Colors: Beige and Green
Most Popular Pairings: Green with Beige
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
August
Primary Pairing Colors: Blue and Beige
Most Popular Pairings: Blue with Orange
Image courtesy of Onihide-san.
September
Primary Pairing Colors: Beige and Green
Most Popular Pairings: Beige with Black and Blue with Black
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
October
Primary Pairing Colors: Blue and Black
Most Popular Pairings: Beige or Blue with Black
Image courtesy of Kyoto Flower Tourism.
November
Primary Pairing Colors: Beige and Green
Most Popular Pairings: Green with Beige for Seniors and Orange with Green for Juniors
Image courtesy of Onihide-san.
December
Primary Pairing Colors: Green and Black
Most Popular Pairings: Purple with Green for Seniors and Yellow with Black for Juniors
You can check out my mini database here ^^
As a note, some colors were very hard to either describe or classify. White and beige are different colors, yet they could have been counted as the exact same color. The same could happen with pink and purple, and even some that were counted as orange that were actually closer to a peach color which could have been counted as beige.
tl;dr: The karyukai uses a TON of various shades of colors, so even trying to put them into categories was not an exact science. Sorry if I got some wrong ^^;
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