Venues: YokoDana Kimono In-Person Shows & Festivals
2017 VENUES SCHEDULE:
Anime Fan Fest New Jersey 2017
March 8.2017: CANCELLED BY SHOW PROMOTERS
Sat.-Sun., April 22,23, 2017
Somerset, New Jersey, Garden State Expo Center
Brooklyn Botanic Garden Sakura Matsuri
Brooklyn, New York, Sat.-Sun., April 29-30, 2017
Northern Star Quilters Guild
World of Quilts XXXVIII
Danbury, Connecticut, Sat-Sun., May 6 &7, 2017
Details and show discounts announced to opt-in members and on our Facebook Page prior to each show.
A BIT OF HISTORY:
As we explain in our About Us page, our business began as an export-import business in 1989, engaged in trade mostly with the Middle East and Japan. From 1998 we focused on Japanese trade and had what you might call 'brick & mortar' locations, places where we offered our Japanese antiques, kimonos and vintage & collectible Japanese fabrics locally in Pennsylvania at the time.
But as our web business grew into the 21st century it was all we could do to keep up with our internet business, so by 2001 we went all-web and closed our locations. Around that time we also tried out doing a quilt show and found intense interest in our kimonos & vintage Japanese fabrics (by piece). Initially we just did one show a year. Then we added a few other shows, all the while our bulk kimono packages and fabric pieces becoming our most popular web products.
As things unfolded we were invited to various festivals,events and shows in the Northeast USA and in so doing learned more and more what our customers liked. As a result of this input from customers we decided to discontinue our Japanese antiques on our web site and focus on Japanese Vintage textiles and bulk kimono packages.
Steadily over the years we kept hearing from all sorts of creative folks; they shared with us the ways in which they used our bulk vintage kimono packages and Japanese kimono fabric pieces (see latest list of creative uses of vintage Japanese fabrics here). Then we had a friend (a couturiere) in Tokyo make various things from our vintage Japanese silks so we could showcase them at shows as samples of how these lovely fabrics from another time could be,as they say, 're-purposed'.
But...everyone wanted to buy the samples! So thus was born a new line of things we now offer at our venues. We have decided that because we don't want to mass-produce them, we won't sell these on-line and only offer them at shows. We hand-make scarves, hair-accessories, purses, tote bags, sashes (obi), pin-cushions, decor pieces, pins, mufflers and more -- all from vintage Japanese kimono fabrics. We make these all year long and have mostly fresh new items for each event in the spring.
So if you're in the Northeast USA (DC to New York City) and are thinking to visit one of our shows, below are more pictures of what we're offering these days, in addition of course to the hand-made vintage kimonos, haori and michiyuki (kimono jackets) and vintage and antique kimono fabric panels.
As we say in Japan Irrashaimase (welcome).
Yoko Lewis
Pin cushions from antique silk kimono fabrics:
Change Purses, hand-made from antique silk kimono fabrics:
