10,000 kimonos… 10,000 unanswered questions.
On Saturday morning at 9.57am, I joined a humming, 20-strong throng of Cantabrians champing at the bit for the City Mission op shop on Barbadoes Street to throw open their doors. “It’s like a Black Friday sale,” one woman mused, adjusting her empty tote bags in anticipation. “Let us in, let us in,” another guy quietly chanted, raising an invisible pitchfork in jest. We were all united by one sweeping affliction that suddenly had Ōtautahi in a chokehold: kimono madness.
It began with a Facebook post made by the Christchurch City Mission in the middle of an idle Tuesday afternoon. “Life is full of surprises and topping our list this week is … thousands of kimonos,” the post reads. “A generous donation of three packed truckloads of kimonos are coming to our Barbadoes Street op shop. Thousands! They are going out the door fast at $2 a pop, so this is your big chance if you have ever fancied owning/wearing one. Arigato!”
Soon enough, the post had hundreds of comments and shares, with IRL queues forming out the door of both the Barbadoes Street and Sydenham City Mission stores. “It’s a kimono frenzy,” City Mission retail team leader Josie Cox told RNZ. “We’re selling them for $2 each and they’ve just gone mad. This morning there were probably 40 people waiting to come in.” The stock arrived by way of three trucks and two vans, and staff couldn’t restock the bins fast enough.
Any seasoned op shopper is always chasing the dream of stumbling across a rare or weird find, be it a war relic, a treasured timepiece, or even a purse containing a family mystery. But this opshop drop was on another scale of novelty and luxury entirely – 10,000 unique pieces, all in perfect condition, from a mysterious private donor. Where did they all come from? Why so, so, so many? Why central Christchurch? Why now? And, once again, why so, so, so many?
I contacted a local kimono historian – who wished to stay anonymous but described themself as “a detective analysing each and every kimono” – to see what they reckoned. “A very unusual story,” they wrote, positing the collection may have recently come into the ownership of someone seeking “a quick resolution.” As for the value, they estimated the total collection would have cost between $10,000-$30,000 to buy in Japan, and at least $5000 to import.
Beyond the monetary value, they also explained the historical and cultural significance. “Kimono were refined over the past 1000 years to the garment we see today,” they said, explaining how the garment is now mostly used as formal wear for the wealthy on special cultural occasions in Japan. “No fashion designer has ever been able to improve it. The design is perfect,” they wrote, adding that each one is also completely unique: “your kimono has no copies.”
Karen Healey was one of the Cantabrians lucky enough to nab a couple of the peerless $2 pieces for herself from the Barbadoes Street op shop, after hearing about the donation from a fellow customer at The Fabric Store. “The second you walked in, there were all these people clustered around these two big bins right at the front – anyone opening the door was hit with kimono,” she described. “It was a brief little miracle… a dusty, noisy, magical experience.”
While Healey says everyone was being “very kind and considerate” when she visited, Anissa Trinder, aka vintage seller Spice Kotiro, told a different story. Trinder was there “on a whim” as the multiple trucks arrived, and says that people “immediately just started going crazy” for the kimonos. She picked up a kimono that she liked the look of, and another woman snatched it right out of her hands. “I just thought, ‘man, fuck this. I do not need a kimono that bad’.”
Being a reseller herself, I asked Trinder about the $2 price point and the fact that several are already being resold on Facebook Marketplace for much more. “The City Mission obviously just wanted to move them through, and they sold them all within the week, which is really beneficial for them,” she said. “I think it’s crazy that lots of them are on Marketplace, especially because it was such a public Christchurch phenomenon and everyone was talking about them.”
Healey purchased three kimonos, one yukata and a haori. “The fabric and the patterning is really what I’m after, so they will be reborn as garments that will be loved and treasured in a slightly different form,” she said. “And it will make a good story – this shirt came from one of the kimono.” After snatch-gate, Trinder didn’t buy anything. “I am very specific with my style and the things that I sell,” she said. “I’m also wary of cultural appropriation and all that stuff.”
That’s another interesting consideration to mull over – is it a risk to have this many kimonos unleashed in a place which still boasts an alarming number of white dreadlocks? While my mystery kimono historian maintained that anyone from “DJs to traditional Japanese housewives” can now wear a kimono, opinions differ on the mainstream popularisation of the garment. (I also reached out to the Japanese Society of Canterbury for comment, but am yet to hear back).
For those who were lucky enough to nab one (or, as Healey observed in one customer, one hundred) of these pieces, there’s also delicate care concerns. The kimono expert recommended they are stored flat, ideally in kimono-friendly paper, in a drawer with silica gel and mothballs. As for washing? Go for a hand wash in cold water. “Must be immersed in a bath to avoid bubbles,” they added. “Wet area will transfer dye to any dry area, so bubbles are the enemy.”
All of the above info would have been useful if, when the doors of the op shop swung open like a saloon on Saturday morning, there had been any of the elusive kimonos left. Alas, we were all about 48 hours too late. I poked about the rest of the store, nabbing a pristine $1 rubber chicken, as multiple bereft women with sharp grey bobs and statement glasses processed the news. “The kimonos have all sold out, I’m so sorry,” the shopkeeper said gently.
“Now they are just a distant memory.”
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