Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1536052
12 SUMMER 2025 While in college, Wong studied abroad in Japan and lived in Kawagoe, a historic town where people were often wearing kimono in daily life. She quickly found a passion for this traditional form of dress. "After coming back home, I ended up being asked to design several student films that involved kimono and was inspired to take a kimono dressing class in order to ensure I was doing everything correctly. This led me to finding the Yamano School of Beauty, which is based in Tokyo but has a Southern California Branch. I took three years of classes and graduated with my professional license as a Kimono Dresser in 2018. There aren't too many people with both film industry experience and kimono experience, so I was excited to be able to provide my skills and knowledge about kimono for Costume Departments as well." Since obtaining her license, Wong has assisted multiple productions as a kimono specialist. She worked with Costume Designer Sharen Davis on Westworld Season 2 to elevate the Edo period-inspired "Shogun World" and dressed Sandra Oh for a scene in the TV show The Sympathizer with Costume Designer Danny Glicker. Wong provided the kimono rental for the production via her textile shop BORO BORO, as well as dressing services, essentially serving as the Personal Costumer to Oh for the shoot dates where she wore kimono. "I provided options for them in the fitting, then after selections were made, I served as Sandra's Personal Set Costumer for the two days she worked in kimono. Getting to meet and work with her was a dream!" BORO BORO began in 2019 when Wong purchased a small lot of vintage haori jackets on a trip to Japan and sold them within a few weeks. "Around that time, I was doing some deep thinking on what I'd like my life to look like if I could do anything I wanted. I had been taking kimono classes on my weekends and realized my dream would be to work doing something with Japanese textiles and kimono. Because of all the digging I had done in order to find the correct materials for my kimono dressing classes, I realized I had developed a lot of knowledge on how to source these items that can often be quite hard to get in the US. Also, because of my kimono training, I realized I could be a resource for an English-speaking audience about how these beautiful garments are both made and worn." In February of 2020, BORO BORO opened and the COVID-19 pandemic caused Wong to shift into e-commerce first. "My original plan was to do markets and events but instead circumstances forced me to pivot online. I'm actually grateful for that because I'm not sure when else I would have had time to figure out how to run an e-commerce business. Now I do a mixture of online sales, in person events, and shopping by appointment at my Silverlake studio. It has been a real joy to take a relatively niche project that I'm so passionate about and to see it grow through the years." In parallel to her accomplishments with kimono, Wong has also studied traditional textile techniques in Japan. "Japan is committed to preserving their traditional arts in a way that few countries are these days, and I've had the opportunity to take several workshops in Japan on various traditional textile techniques. While I was in undergrad, I received a research fellowship to travel to Okinawa and Hokkaido to study the textiles of the minority populations who live in those areas (the Ryukyu and Ainu, respectively). I spent a month traveling around Japan visiting museums, dye houses, weaving studios, and cultural centers to learn as much as I could about the unique textiles of each region. It was my first time traveling solo, and an incredible experience." Another traditional art that she has studied is indigo dyeing. In 2017, Wong took an Intro to Shibori workshop in Fujino, Japan, where she spent 10 days learning the basics of working with natural indigo "Every one of us is communicating via clothing when we walk out the door every day even if we don't realize it. In the same way, I love the way costumes serve as such a powerful nonverbal method of storytelling on film." –Laura Wong Still from the TV show The Sympathizer. Kimono dressing by Laura Wong.