Kamakura lady. Source.
Eiga Monogatari is an account of Heian court life written during the Kamakura period, a century or two after the events recorded. Enough change had occurred in fashions that the anonymous author felt compelled to observe:
When one hears tales of earlier days, one can scarcely believe that ladies went about in public dressed in so few layers of clothing and with so little padding in their garments. One wonders how they managed to keep warm even at home, since ladies nowadays are always suffering from ailments caused by the weather, though they pile on so many layers that they are in danger of looking like frumps. But that was the fashion, and we must suppose that even a Junior Consort or Empress wore only a fraction of what we would consider an adequate costume.
A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, volume 1, page 218, trans. McCullough and McCullough.
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