Noh costume (nuihaku) with autumn flowers

In the traditional Japanese musical drama called Noh, female characters usually wear an under robe like this one, known as a nuihaku, beneath an outer robe called a karaori. Nuihaku robes feature a combination of embroidered designs and applied gold and silver leaf. Here, gold bands represent mist floating in an autumn meadow among flowers including flame-like cockscomb, dianthus (with five fringed petals), chrysanthemums, and clumps of the shrub-like bush clover. Noh costumes such as this one created in the mid-1600s, during the Edo period, derived from robes worn by fashionable aristocratic women of the Momoyama period (1573–1603).