Fashion: Esthetics for a Rainy Day

Umbrellas are considered practical items, not usually objects for beautification. Some manufacturers have strewn them with flowers or polka dots, but the steady demand is for the ubiquitous black number—as exciting as an American cheese sandwich.

Clearly, there was a need to lighten the grim situation, and the need has been met in the form of the bangasa, the traditional Japanese parasol. Stores around the country are selling an improved version, made in Japan, to the specifications of U.S. Importer and Designer John Reynolds. The first few sessions under a bangasa, which is fashioned of oilpaper and bamboo, are as heady as a day in a glue factory; but the smell of varnish soon fades, and what is left is an exercise in esthetics.

Soft and subtle shades are worked onto the translucent paper in geometric blocks or bright floral patterns. The inner bamboo frame is as delicately engineered as one of Nervi’s tilted arches. Although they look fragile, Reynolds’ bangasa are stronger in the wind than regular umbrellas, which reliably invert just when wind and rain are heaviest.

Bangasa first caught on on campus. Wellesley and Sarah Lawrence and Vassar girls love theirs, and, more surprisingly, so do the boys at Harvard Medical School, who prefer the larger, solid-color model. Now the bangasa can be seen in Little Rock as well as Fifth Avenue, and more than 30,000 have been sold to date, ranging in price from $5 to $50 for a specially crafted patio-size bangasa.

With the usual quirk of fads, the bangasa is out of fashion in Japan. To be seen with a bangasa in Tokyo is to be branded a rube. The modern Japanese now prefers to keep off the raindrops with one of those nice American-style black umbrellas.