About Nana N.Y. (Artist/Designer/Tailor/Stylist)
Nana N.Y. is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her artwork includes cut-and-sewn creations, collages, drawings, photography, and assemblage. As an artist, she began designing and making her own clothes at the age of 15. By the age of 20, all clothes she wore--from pull-over tops and jeans to technical outerwear--were her creations.
Though Nana N.Y. has designed her clothes, she didn't have the ordinary "passion for fashion" that other designers typically have growing up. She created clothes out of necessity in order to have something that fitted her body well and satisfied her tastes at the same time.
She never used a commercial dress form to create clothes for her body. Instead, she uses her own body for draping to make her garments which then become the samples. Also using her body as a canvas, she has presented her work of art wherever she went. Because she wears these samples, she is always aware of the level of comfort and durability of each garment she creates.
Nana N.Y. was born and raised within the 23 Wards of Tokyo and moved to Brooklyn, NY, in 1996. She had lived in a few different neighborhoods in Brooklyn before settling near the A/C train in the year 2000.
Yn Couture by Nana N Yoshida is a design house where sartorial items are made to order. The design house was originally named Yn Couture in 2000. However, by around 2005, the word "couture" had been overused and became outdated. That was when the name Yn Couture by Nana N Yoshida was abbreviated stylistically to YNC by NNY or ync by nny.
The original Yn
Couture's "yn" (pronounced [in]) refers to yin and yang's yin in
Japanese, where yin represents shadow while yang stands for light.
The first idea is external. It was to break away from the typical images of the bright side of the fashion industry. On the other side of the industry, there were always seamstresses working with minimal wages, wastes from overproduction, and consumers who do not look like runway models.
To address the above issues in the industry, the following actions are taken respectively at ync by nny First, all Yn Couture products are made by the artist Nana N.Y. There are never unhappy seamstresses behind the brand. Second, at Yn Couture, most remnant materials are used for other purposes such as making small accessories so that waste is minimized. Lastly, all Yn Couture's first samples are made for Nana as a fit model. Nana is a real person, not a dress form or an unusually skinny model. Therefore, since day one, many of Yn Couture's items have been made to fit and complement the curvy bodies prevalent in our City.
The second idea is
internal. Nana N.Y. believes that a person's inner self is yang
(light), and outfits are mere yin (shadow). Outfits are there to
help enhance the wearer's precious inner character. Yn
Couture’s items would never wear a person, but they are to
be worn. Yn, also meaning rhyme in Japanese, strives to support the
wearer’s confidence by raising their vibe.
At the maison Yn Couture, Nana N.Y.
successfully designed and created made-to-measure outfits for projects
such as photo shoots, music videos, and concert tours for clients that
include Lil'
Kim, Eve, G-Unit members, Trina, Fergie, Rihanna, Ms. Lauryn
Hill, and others. She has also worked with companies such as Supreme New York,
Nike, and Guinness.
Between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, Yn couture's ready-to-wear items and accessories, all made by Nana N.Y. in small batches in Brooklyn, New York, were exclusively sold at some of NYC's most avant-garde boutiques including Patricia Field, Hotel Venus, and A New York Thing on Hester Street until these stores closed their physical locations.
The
collections of some of the clothes Nana N.Y. has made over two decades from
1997 to 2017 are compiled in a coffee-table-style book. It's a
contemporary history book on NYC street fashion, focused on Brooklyn
styles, available from HERE. You can also see some of her work from this link.
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© 2005-2023 Nana N. Yoshida
This webpage was designed and created by Nana N￥ from scratch using NVU.