THE TEXTILE COMES FIRST
I let it become fashion.
Vintage quilts. Tablecloths. Curtains. Sheets. Needlework. Things somebody made, used, saved, folded away — and eventually let go.
I look for the thing that makes a textile impossible to leave behind. Then I cut around stains, damage and decades of use, preserving the details that made me pick it up in the first place.
There is no pattern telling me what happens next. That’s the point.
THE EXECUTIVE
Before Kimonoir, I spent decades in technology and marketing, including leadership roles at IBM, Microsoft and Cognos.
I know what a strategy deck looks like. I also know when to ignore one.
THE PROFESSOR
I teach business management, entrepreneurship and project management.
Which may explain my unreasonable enthusiasm for turning a pile of discarded textiles into an operational system.
THE ARTIST
Kimonoir began with vintage textiles, a pair of scissors and no particular intention of starting a fashion label.
That part got away from me.
THE THINGS WE KEEP
Every textile carries a story. I make sure it isn’t finished yet.
A quilt stitched by someone’s grandmother. A tablecloth saved for company. Curtains that hung in the same room for forty years. These aren’t just raw materials.
Kimonoir is built around the idea that what already exists has value — not because it is perfect, but because it has lived.
I don’t erase that history. I work with it. Stains, repairs, worn edges and all.
WHY KIMONOIR
The name came from looking for light in a very dark place.
My dad died. And I lost my north star. Japan had been a huge part of our family history. Dad wanted me to go back, visit his best friend (his 'brother') and introduce his granddaughter to his favourite place in the world. I did.
And I decided I needed a thrift day. So at the Oi Racecourse Tokyo flea market, I met a kimono historian. And we found a vendor with an extraordinary collection of vintage kimono textiles. For 400 yen (which is about $3.70 CAD), 38 pounds of them somehow became mine. I brought them home and started working with them.
The name Kimonoir came out of that time: beautiful Japanese textiles, profound loss, and the unexpected experience of finding colour and creativity when much of my world had gone black.
My dad didn’t inspire a fashion label. He was part of the life that made it possible.
And Kimonoir became one of the ways I found my way toward the light again.