UPCYCLING! Carefully crafted vintage kimonos feature techniques, intricate embroidery, and vibrant colors that cannot be reproduced today, and their beauty is something to be proud of as Japanese. In Japan, over 500,000 tons of clothing, including kimonos, are discarded annually. Of these, about 68% are simply thrown away as burnable or non-burnable garbage (according to the Ministry of the Environment). In addition, kimonos collected through resource recovery are auctioned off by auctioneers to second-hand clothing stores, but only a portion of these kimonos are sold and resold as second-hand clothing. I want to Breathing new life into old kimonos that would otherwise be thrown away. We have so many things that Too good to waste. Mottainai ( もったいない or 勿体無い ) is a Japanese phrase conveying a sense of regret over waste, or to state that one does not deserve something because it is too good.