Shop of the month: KimonoKimono

Pushing open the door of Phil Porter’s Perry Road shop, KimonoKimono, is to enter a world of calm. The rumbling traffic melts away to the quiet strains of traditional Japanese instruments, and light floods through the huge windows. Kimono hang on the wall like tapestries, while red paper lanterns criss-cross the ceiling. On the counter are intense sticks, cards and accessories, while hair pins and jewellery sit inside glass cabinets.

“I started my collection when I was 16,” Phil says in a soft, calm voice. “I saw a kimono for sale in a junk shop and I fell in love. It had beautiful silk and embroidery, and I wanted to know more. It was the start of a life-long obsession.”

Phil has a collection of around 700 unique kimono

Following a career teaching fashion and textiles, in 2010 Phil put on a hugely popular exhibition of pieces from his private kimono collection. When, later that year, he was selling his home and possessions to move to India, one of the few things he kept was the collection. After four years away, Phil returned to the UK with no real plan of what he would do next, “but I though, if I love them this much, and other people do too, then maybe having my own shop was something I could do,” he says.

The inside of the shop is a calm space, with soft music and light flooding in

On a shoestring budget, Phil opened the shop and has watched it grow over the past three years. “People make special trips from all over,” Phil says. “A Japanese student brought her parents here the other week. She told them it was her favourite shop in Bristol.”

Phil stocks only vintage and antique kimono – from the 1980s back to 1810. Cotton starts from £50, while silk starts from £70 and goes up to £2,000 – “which is not excessive for a kimono,” Phil says. “They are individually made by hand: hand-dyed, woven and stitched. It takes between 18 months to two years to create one. Last year, a beautiful piece made by a living treasure went on sale for £68,000 and sold just like that.”

Carp detail on a kimono, picked out in metallic thread

In the back of the shop are brightly-coloured racks, along with stacks of folded garments in delicate paper. Phil pulls out a couple of his favourites to demonstrate the range. “The market is broad: from people wanting a beautiful dressing gown, to people who seriously want to wear a kimono, people who collect textiles, and producers for television and film who often come to me with a shopping list,” he says, unwrapping one embroidered with carp in metallic thread.

Phil used to go on buying trips to Japan, but now checks the big Japanese auctions daily to see if anything is coming up for sale. Increasingly, it’s getting more difficult and expensive to buy as popularity grows, collections are lost through natural disasters in Japan, and as shipping costs rise. “There’s lots out there, but so much of it is damaged or marked,” Phil continues, smoothing a thick kimono made in Kyoto in 1910. “I’m looking for pieces that are as near to perfect as possible, but it’s very difficult to buy textiles online. You have to be able to touch it, feel the weight and see how it falls.”

A rack of kimono at the back of the shop

Not only are the kimono pieces of unique artwork – only three of each design are ever made, not to mention the skill of hand-making each from a single piece of cloth that is decorated before being tailored – but dressing takes real skill. “Dressing is meditation,” Phil says. “You must be in a quiet, calm headspace, and it must all be done in the right order. You must go back and correct everything before moving on.”

“Kimono are going to come into their own in the next couple of years, with the Olympics in Japan in 2020,” Phil predicts, looking at his handiwork as he tweaks the kimono to make each line crisp and sharp; each fall of cloth deliberate and measured. “The ones currently in fashion are a poor effort – throwaway nonsense. Why wear that when you can have the real thing? We’re so used to mass produced clothing, but how many paintings does a painter make that are the same?”

KimonoKimono
13 Perry Road
Bristol
BS1 5BG
044 7561 196 743
www.facebook.com/kimonokimono.net