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TOKYO — Fashion designer Yumi Katsura, who helped popularise Western bridal wear in Japan and who made a golden cape for Pope John Paul II, has died aged 94, her office said on Tuesday.
Having studied haute couture in Paris, Katsura opened Japan’s first bridal salon in 1964 at a time when traditional kimonos still dominated in wedding ceremonies and Western-style dresses were worn by only 3 per cent of brides.
Starting in New York in 1981 with the “Yumi Line” silhouette dress, she opened stores worldwide including in Italy and France, “influencing brides not only in Japan but also around the world”, her office said on its website.
In 1993, she made a vestment — a robe for religious services — for John Paul II that took two years to make and showcased Hakata-ori weaving, a technique used for making kimonos.
The same year the pontiff, who died in 2005, wore the cape and matching golden mitre to an Easter service that was broadcast worldwide.
“Tears rolled down my cheeks when I received the Pope’s thank you note,” Katsura recalled, adding that it reinforced her sense of mission to “transmit Japanese beauty to the world”.
Katsura, whose real name was Yumi Yuki, also set a Guinness World Record in 2012 for the highest number — 13,262 — of pearls on a wedding dress.
She admitted not wearing a wedding dress for her own nuptials, however.
“White isn’t a good colour for me,” Katsura said in an interview in 2018. “I wore a dark green velvet dress.”
“My mission is to make women happy all over the world,” she told another interviewer.
