Closet Feature: Kokon Tozai Antique Furisode Remake Bag - Mustard

Feeling a little antsy tonight because my coordinate for the September Kimono de Jack London isn't going too well, so I thought I'd distract myself by digging through my Flickr for some old photos to post about.

Imagine my surprise when I realised that I hadn't posted anything at all about Kokon Tozai!

Kokon Tozai is a Japanese brand of clothing, bags and other accessories made of kimono fabric. While a majority of their items are made using their own kimono fabric designs, they do have a small selection of items made of antique kimono fabrics.

My sister and I first bumped into an outlet of this store in Singapore about 5 years ago. We were wandering around the mall that's connected to the hotel we always stay in, and stumbled across this awesome place selling bags, shoes, purses, and all sorts of accessories that were made of old kimono. We couldn't help ourselves - we just had to get something ^^;

(Note: Normally, I'd be horrified at the thought of using such beautiful kimono in that way, but they actually had a brochure that said that they were careful to make these out of unuseable kimono only.)

Their offered items include: hairclips, hair pins, phone charms, purses, wallets, phone holders, bags, card holders, glasses cases, hairties, shoes, T-shirts, scarves, shawls, soft toys, bracelets, rings.... Alot of lovely things to look at! ^_^

Today's featured bag is a gorgeous mustard yellow, with purple ume (plum) blossoms and a teal section that seems to be depicting wisteria, from what little I can see.

Front:


Back:


If you'd like to get something similar for yourself, I'm outlining their contact details below:

Website:
http://www.kokontozai.com.sg/

Stores:
KOKON TOZAI
(City Link Branch)
One Raffles Link
#B1-16 City Link Mall
Singapore
Tel: (65) 6835 9927
Opening Hours: 10.30am - 9.30pm

KYOTO ARTS BOUTIQUE
(Millenia Walk Branch)
9 Raffles Boulevard
#01-52 Millenia Walk
Singapore
Tel: (65) 6338 7417
Opening Hours: 11am - 8pm

On a separate note, the last time I bought something from them, they were also stocking some really nice good-quality silk obiage :) I bought a lovely brown one and a seafoam green one from them.

Shop Open!

I have officially opened my blogshop! You can access it through THIS LINK.

It is very simple, and maybe a little fussy, but I'm only a not-so-tech-savvy Uni student, so please forgive its clumsiness ;)

Please read the important details of the shop before purchasing :) They are available HERE and on the sidebar of the shop.


Three things I have mentioned in my opening post that I will repeat here:

1) I have yet to find the time to post every single item on the shop. Therefore, if you wish to see more items for sale, please visit my Flickr page HERE. I'm sorry, but items that state "on hold" or "sold" are no longer available.

2) As I am moving to Malaysia soon, and have to pack up all my things including shop stock, I will not be taking any orders past 15th June 2009.

3) Should you wish for more detailed pictures of any item, I will take requests until 12th June 2009.


Once again, the shop is accessible through THIS LINK.

Thanks for visiting! :D

My shop?

Remember how I was talking about how I wanted to open a small online shop using Blogger? I decided to screw what Google thinks and go ahead with the idea anyway :)

So far, I think the set-up has been fine. I've got the layout down, and things like "How to Order", "Payments", "Shipping", "Refunds and Cancellations" and "Terms and Conditions" down. I also set up an "Enquiries" bit. Most of these are accessible through the side-bar :D

Here's a sneak preview:

I'm not 100% sure when I'll officially declare it open. I'm still in the middle of taking pictures of the things I'm about to sell. The pictures aren't very consistent - I'm using some of the professionally taken pictures that I'd saved from the auctions I'd won some items in. >_o I hope that wouldn't make too much of a difference...

Anyway, I'll give you guys a bit of a notice once it's up and fully running ^_^

P/S: On a very random note, I'm getting abit worried about how I seem to be bruising really easily and bleeding alot lately. Just two days ago, I was blowing my nose when suddenly blood came gushing out. It didn't stop for quite a while o_O The blood was actually dripping off my face! Ugh, I haven't had a nosebleed this bad in years. Coupled with the easy bruising, I'm getting kind of worried.... Then again, I may be watching too much of House :P

Kimono Sale Catalogue

After two days of exams, I decided to take the night off, as well as tomorrow afternoon because my friends are coming over for the kimono sale :)

I spent the whole evening and night cleaning my room - vacuuming, rearranging things, generally going about to randomly straighten up the room. Once again, there is so much space in my room! Or at least, for one person, it's alot of space :P I also decided to rearrange the kimono pile and keep a simple catalogue of things I've decided to sell. It'll also help me keep track of things I've already sold, to whom, and for how much.

I've just finished doing everything (I'd forgotten to price the obiage and obijime! LOL) and the tally is:

8 kimono
10 wool kimono
2 wool kimono ensembles
3 hanhaba obi
16 nagoya obi
11 obijime
15 obiage
8 juban
2 haori
4 douchuugi
3 michiyuki
4 "others"

In addition to all that, Hong also contributed to my pile:

1 michiyuki
5 dance kimono
2 wool kimono
1 nagoya obi

Wow, that's alot of things to get rid of!! I've priced everything rather fairly I think, except for some of the mint stuff which are a little expensive, but still fair. I can't wait for tomorrow!!!

Oh, just as a random note, but I'm never using any shower gel other than Body Shop again. I tried a number of other shower gels/creams - the Palmolive one gave me rashes, Dove was alright but had a too-strong smell (sensitive nose), and Patty's preferred brand.... Well, I've been using that one for a few weeks now, and I only realised today that it is the cause of my increasingly dry skin :( It's the reason why my skin has lost its healthy glow and is always dry and flaky and uncomfortable!!

Sooooo.... I took out my emergency travel-sized bottle of Body Shop Mango shower gel for today's shower and WOW I can really feel the difference! My skin feels much much softer, just like I remember it, and not at all dry or rough like Patty's soap makes me feel.

After all that cleaning I did, I felt I should give myself a reward, so I also indulged myself in a full-body lotioning. (I rarely do this - I usually only put lotion on my arms and legs) I also decided to use my favourite Body Shop Grapeseed Body Butter instead of my usual Body Shop Shea Butter. (Yes, I really like Body Shop stuff :P I practically swear by them!)

=^__^= Ahhh heaven! Everything feels soft and smooth now. All I need is for someone to give me a facial, do my hair and give me a manicure and I'll feel overly pampered. Once I go home, I'll HAVE to schedule that one of these days. Maybe I'll throw in a back and shoulder massage too :D Mmmmmmm.....

Pile of kimono stuff to sell!

After we'd cleaned up yesterday's kitsuke fun, Hong and I sorted out all the junk I wanted to get rid of (*sob* such a mean way of saying "letting go of my kimono"). Today, she came over again, and we measured, inspected, labelled and priced every item I'm going to have to sell off! She also brought over some of her dance kimono to sell :D I fell in love with nearly all of them! Haha. Too bad they were all lined.... I took the only unlined one :P

I took a picture of the pile as a reference to the amount I have to sell. Later, I'll compare it to the pile that's left after my friends have gone through them hehehehe.


Isn't that such a big pile of things to sell? I hope that the friends I invited over will enjoy looking through them haha.

I was putting notes on my Flickr picture to identify what's in there, and so far, I have:
1) mint condition synthetic kimono
2) mint condition wool kimono
3) mint condition obi
4) various other obi
5) various other kimono
6) obiage
7) obijime
8) haori
9) michiyuki
10) douchuugi
11) juban

Phew, that is quite alot, isn't it! I think I got rid of about a quarter of my kimono closet. I'm still wondering if I should also sell one of my furisode.... Hmmm...

Still, I got a new piece today ^^;;;; Hong had this lobster obi she didn't want, but I found it really really really cute, so I took it! I think I'm going to wear it tomorrow and post it on here and on the IG forums to show its utter uber cuteness/coolness! :D

I'm really glad to have gotten all that done with and out of the way. And to think, it only took a day's work! Of course, I think a part of the reason why it didn't take long was that I still had records of most of the kimono measurements stored on my laptop, so we didn't have to measure quite a few of them :)

Okay, I'm going to go put away those kimono that I'd chosen to keep. I've completely emptied out one of my kimono storage bins from IKEA! Wow! Now there's going to be so much more space for my kimono :)

P/S: I'm feeling really tired now. I finally managed to fall asleep at 3am today, but I was rudely awakened this morning at about 7.30am. This Chinese woman four doors to the left was standing in her garden, screaming and crying shrilly into her phone. It was so loud it echoed in the compound! What's worse, I slept with the window open last night, so the sound wasn't at all muffled. I think she screamed and cried into her phone for over an hour.

I couldn't go back to sleep at all, so I just got up. Normally, I'd feel sorry for her, but after waking me up when I was already tired to begin with, I just felt really irritated.

She started screaming again sometime this afternoon. She wasn't screaming words - just the "aaaaaahhhhhh" kind. It made Hong and I think that something really wrong was happening, so we peeked out my room window to check. Nope, she was just standing in the garden, screaming over and over again. It was really creepy and freaked me out. Alot of people living in the compound were looking out of their windows, or going out onto their gardens/balconies to see what was wrong.

I know it's mean, but she makes me feel embarrassed to be called a "Chinese woman" and therefore in the same category she is.

Kimono Shop~

Hehe, regarding that kimono shop idea that I had, I've set up an experimental blog to see how it'll look like. It's not going to be anything but experimental until I have once again settled at home in Malaysia (and preferably with a nice new ledger book with clean white sheets <3 Gotta love Accounting) but so far, it's looking good! :)

I'll probably keep the blog, and once I'm ready to start selling, I'll take down all those "THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL" notices :)

So far I've only set up the side-bar, which I'll use as a site navigator, set the pretty layout (albeit with some modifications on the text colours) and posted some "terms and conditions" and a sample post for sale items, but I still have a loooong way to go. Also, I set my navigator a little too elaborate for such a small shop, but I want things to be easy to find :P

I need to think up more terms and conditions, a "how to order" method, a payment method, and details on refunds and order cancellations.

Even if I end up not running the shop, this has become a really fun hobby!!! :P

I used to do this sort of thing alot (creating blogs for fun, trying to make more elaborate layouts, etc) but I stopped because I was really in love with my old layout haha. I'm glad I managed to find another layout that I like equally as much, now that I'm tired of the old one :D

Kimono Sell-Off

I've decided to sell a number of my kimono, mostly the lined komon because I won't be able to wear them anymore. I thought I'd recoup some of my costs ^^;

I've invited a few of my fellow IG forumers and kimono friends to my flat for first dibs, and because they're friends, they get 50% discount :D Anything they don't buy gets put on the IG June trade thread, and anything that doesn't go THEN will be sold in the July Richmond event thing that Hong is going to. She and Isla are renting a table for the weekend, and Isla has made a bunch of really really cute kanzashi to sell! Hong said she might do a yukata dressing booth, and my kimono can be sold at Isla's table.

I'm wondering about selling these things online - I really don't trust eBay for selling stuff after all those horror stories I've heard from IG-ers, but I don't know where else to sell these.... IG only has one week-long trade thread every month, and I'm not familiar enough with the people on the Tsuruko Maiko forums to feel comfortable trading there. I did manage to make one trade through Flickr, but I don't want to set up a business there...

After looking at Yukikahou's blog shop, and this LiveJournal kimono page, I wondered... What if I created another blog on Blogger, but use that as a shop instead? It's a recent idea, so I haven't gotten out all of the details, but I was thinking of having a "Rules and Disclaimers" as well as payment details and Kimono Categories in the side-bar, and in the main body, I'd post each item for sale in individual posts. There will be one main picture on the post, and details of the item written in it, and a link to a Flickr set that will have more detailed pictures of the item. Payments will have to go through Paypal.

It all sounds well and good, but there is one major problem: the shipping. Since I'm moving back to Malaysia soon, I don't know how I will handle that. If I lived in the UK, I know my way about and the Post Office is easy enough to figure out. Buuuuut.. I'm not at all familiar with Malaysian post offices. In fact, I've never stepped in one before. Yeah, sheltered life. My mum posted all letters for me, and everything else came delivered. I guess I'll just have to learn.

There's also the matter of packaging items properly. I suppose my mum can get packaging materials really cheap from Petaling Street. Maybe she can teach me, so I can do it myself.

What about timing? When do I send out parcels? Theoretically, if I had a job like my sister's, I could always check for sales and confirmed payments every night when I come home from work, then pack any items before I go to bed and send it off the next day during my lunch break. I really don't know how well that would work out in practice.

I did think that I could add a little incentive for Malaysians to buy them, like "For people living in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, I'm willing to arrange a pick-up of the item at the following shopping centers on Saturdays or Sundays.." etc.

Of course, that all assumes that I actually succeed with the shop, and have pretty regular sales, which is impossible given that I don't actually have many things to sell. Hmmm.. Now there's an idea :P While looking for a job, I can set up a shop haha. When I do get a job, I can always maintain this shop as a form of extra income hehe. Hmmm, more excuses to buy kimono lots from YJA then.... :P

Yukikahou's blog did give me an idea on renting out kimono and yukata, and dressing other people in them for a small fee. I was very tempted to do the same thing with my kimono and yukata, but I'm not entirely sure I trust random people with my kimono and yukata... Still, Hong and I were discussing renting out my yukata as some form of income, and we thought I'd start out small, like at Bon Odori or something.

This week, I'm going to sort out all my kimono stuff and see which ones are for sale, and which ones I'm to keep. Once that's done, I'm going to measure each piece, check the condition, take detailed pictures and price them. When I'm finished cataloguing my stock, I'll turn to sorting my stuff-to-keep. I've organized and recorded most of my pieces, somewhat, but not all of them, and I think I'll need some sort of reference for myself on how to price these items.

In th meantime, I'm going to set up a new blog to test my shop idea :D I don't know if it's actually allowed to have a blog shop on Blogger... The rules state "Unless expressly authorised in writing by Google, you agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, trade, resell or exploit for any commercial purposes (a) any portion of the Service, (b) use of the Service or (c) access to the Service." in no. 7 of the terms and conditions page. Is a blog shop considered to be "commercial purposes" if it's just a place for me to get rid of stuff I don't want? Oh well. Otherwise, I can go to Geocities and create a webshop there.

What think you of my idea?