The word luxury gets thrown around a lot in marketing. Luxury mattresses. Luxury car washes. Luxury instant noodles. It’s so freely applied to different brands and different experiences that it can lose its potency, which means we have collectively lost the meaning of what real, authentic luxury truly means.
So in today’s journal, we’re going to reflect on what real luxury is. Real, authentic luxury has a few defining qualities. For our kimono robes, luxury means handcrafted pieces made from materials we proudly stand behind. It means our pieces are designed by co-founders, sisters Renee and Tiffany Tam, who draw from vintage inspiration and family heritage, not trends. And it means our pieces are put together by skilled artisans who know what they’re doing, and have received that knowledge from techniques passed down through generations. Those three things are not complicated, but they are increasingly rare, and they are exactly the kind of luxury we have built into KIM+ONO since the beginning.
Photo by @for3ver.nyc
Sustainability is Inherent
The conversation around sustainability in fashion tends to focus on certifications and supply chain pledges, which very much matter, but they can also forget something simpler: the most sustainable garment is the one that does not need to be replaced.
Our ladies silk robes are made from 100% Grade 6A Mulberry Silk, the highest grade available, because that grade means the filaments are long, uniform, and genuinely strong. This is an often ignored factor of sustainable luxury and translates directly into how the fabric behaves over time: it does not pill, it does not thin, it does not lose its drape after a season of washing. A robe made this way does not end up in a landfill after two years because it fell apart. It becomes part of your life for a decade.
The same applies to our men's silk robes, which we designed with the same material standards and the same conviction that you should feel quality in every piece we make. A garment made well, from materials that are honest, will serve whoever is wearing it. That is the whole argument for quality, and it is an environmental argument as much as an aesthetic one.
Fast fashion is expensive in the long run, even when it is cheap upfront, because it has to be replaced constantly. The robe that lasts ten years and costs more initially is the more luxurious and less wasteful choice, every time. We have always believed this, and it shapes every production decision we make.
Photo by Augie Chang
Intentional Luxury Design Comes from Heritage
Renee and Tiffany grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown, the daughters of parents who built a life and a business in a community celebrating their culture every day. The aesthetic language the sisters absorbed growing up, the vintage Asian art forms, the botanical motifs, the symbolism embedded in textiles that stretched back centuries, all set the aesthetic vision for KIM+ONO.
When they design a collection, they don’t have to rely on trends because they’re drawing from a visual and cultural inheritance they know personally. It’s that gift of heritage that the sisters translate into wearable works of art. The cherry blossom prints in our kimono wraps reference a symbolism that extends back for centuries: impermanence, the acute beauty of things that do not last, the reminder to be present. The lotus in our Silk Collections references resilience, a growth toward light from difficult ground. The chrysanthemum speaks to longevity and the deepening of beauty over time.
None of this is ornamental. It’s a cherished heritage-rich symbolism inspired from lived experience and genuine knowledge, crafted through design. Luxury here is about intentionality and the ability to take generations-old inspirations and bring them into the present day. It takes time and attention to pass craft and design down through the years, but it’s this shared historical knowledge that makes a kimono robe into a luxurious one-of-a-kind living heirloom.
Photo by @mariacalderon.art
Handcrafted Means Originality
Our Handpainted Silk Collection is the clearest expression of luxury via the handcrafted, generations-old techniques of our handpainted production process. Each robe takes a minimum of seven working days to complete. The artisan sketches the design onto 100% silk by hand, then paints the background using traditional watercolor techniques, then the motif, waiting for each layer to dry completely before beginning the next. The process cannot be rushed due to the natural processes of the paint and the material working together.
What comes out of this process is a piece that is, in the strictest sense, one of a kind. Each time one of our artisan’s picks up the brush and begins the process, the watercolor settles slightly differently every time. Two robes from the same design, made by the same artisan in the same week, will not be identical. The variation is not a defect, but rather the signature of a hand at work. The time and labor it takes to craft each piece is indeed luxury, and it’s precisely what mass production cannot fake.
This is also a method that is disappearing. The artisans who do this work trained for years to reach the level of skill required, and there are fewer of them with every passing decade. When we say these are among the last of their kind, it’s true. This fact is another aspect of luxury – something so singular it cannot be replicated.
Our best robe for daily wear, the Washable Silk Collection, is produced differently but with the same handcrafted technique. The hand-sketched prints were developed in-house by Renee and Tiffany, translated from original designs onto 100% Grade 6A Mulberry Silk, and hand-finished so they hold up to the reality of a daily routine.
What is true luxury?
A piece of real luxury doesn’t speak to status, but rather intention. To choose luxury is to make a decision about how you want to live and concretize it into the form of something you will use every day. When you put on a silk kimono robe made by someone who spent years learning how to make it, from a material that was chosen for its high quality, designed by a family drawing from their rich heritage, you are wearing true luxury. A handcrafted original piece of wearable art that makes your life feel more intentional and more connected each time you wear it — that is real, authentic luxury.
