Last week I put a small handful of new things by yoshiki hishinuma up on the website. TBH it’s probably two armsful, because although it’s only four things, even a single small garment scrunched up into a ball or something likely takes up more than one full hand.

Anyway, the silver velvet skirt pictured above is a particular favourite. Partly for its material qualities: it’s shiny, and catches the light in a way I find delightful, and is one of the softest velvets I’ve had the good fortune to handle. But partly because there’s a story attached, the gist of which is: on boxing day an old friend walked into the shop wearing an identical skirt. That’s what pictures 1 and 2 show: nathan (one half of our sister shop / next door neighbour, shop pond) holding the skirt I have for sale, and sarah wearing her version.

To be quite honest, I didn't realise at first. I just remember noticing sarah wearing the skirt at some point, and thinking she was trying it on. But after a while it started to feel like sarah was wearing the skirt very comfortably (in the manner of someone who either owns an inhabits a thing, or someone who will soon own it), and only then did I notice that my version of the skirt was still hanging on the rack! Further enquiries revealed that sarah had found her version at shag melbourne in melbourne, which is doubly uncanny because a visiting interstate couple (who from memory live in sydney now but perhaps were from melbourne?) had been telling us about shag mere days earlier.

This was obviously unexpected, and required documentation. So I was thrilled that sarah very obligingly let me take the pictures above with nathan's assistance (nathan famously has “the best arm in adelaide”). There are also these images of  clare, giuseppe, sarah and sofia touching the skirt, which happened spontaneously:

After taking the first two pictures, I'd put my version of the skirt down on the counter I share with shop pond and clare, giuseppe, sarah, and sofia, who were also visiting at the time, simply couldn't resist touching it (it's very, very touchable).

At the time of writing, the skirt is still available. In our physical shop on ebenezer place, and online here.