Yoko gives up designing...

If it could’ve worked out in Yoko’s favour, maybe, just maybe she could give up her flight attendant post of 30 years and devote all her energies to fashion designing! For fashion designing is her passion, her “gift”! “But you can’t be everything,” said the bald-headed, bicycle-riding, always matching “eccentric” fashion designer.

She learned her lesson — that it’s not always good to plan. After investing over $40,000 in setting up a computer system and website to facilitate her overseas market so that her clothing could be purchased online, via the Internet, she ran into trouble — credit card trouble. “I wanted to do everything out of Trinidad...because when people see (my work) they say you’d go down good in London or Paris. But they’re (commercial banks) saying that apparently I need a million dollars to operate my business. So, I had to give it up,” Yoko said in an interview with People. She even cried over it. So, from now on, spontaenity is the key. “I don’t know what my destiny holds. I’m spiritual, I know there’s wrong and right and I always try to do the right thing. I know this is my karma.”

Yoko’s fashion designs to some, were “out of this world”, literally. It was futuristic, sexy, strong, dominatrix-type and “hookerism” according to her, and never really found its niche in the local market. Although, for more than 15 years now she’s been outfitting Prime Minister Patrick Manning through her wardrobe consultancy business. “But he’s so busy now that I can’t catch up with him. Ah looking for yuh Patrick,” was Yoko’s message to the PM. “My fashion always caused an impact, that’s for normal people, though, but others loved it,” she said. We’re talking about fishnet stockings, whips, spikes, studs and flourescent thongs she’d have her models don at her clothing line launches and gala events. The local leg of Miss Universe, some ten years ago, was the perfect showcase when she got to “bend” the rules. “They said no whips, no thongs but,” she smiled, “I was allowed to do sexy things and get away with it.” Sex and violence sells the most, she said, hence the reason she took that route in fashion designing. “I’m not going to compete with the rest of the world with pants, shirts and dresses. I did straight things but it wasn’t me,” she said.

You wouldn’t see her clothing hung on the racks of any store but Yoko wears them from time to time. When we sat down for our interview at Town Centre Mall, last Tuesday, Yoko drew the stares as well as eager fans who wanted to shake her hand, say hello and even have their picture taken with her. Yoko was dressed in all pink, with some grey. She wore a piece from her collection — pink studded necklace. The abdominal area was very visible since her t-shirt was cut at mid-rib. The abs are maintained by a strict routine of 1,000 reps per week. The years of body-building have paid off too! Complementing the tee was her pink trousers, pink Timberland boots and pink watch. Even her undergarments were pink, “can’t not have that matching”, said the very down-to-earth and energetic Yoko who is sometimes called a “freak.” Her signature look is the hood, that always has the public guessing as to how it stays on her head. “People have discussions about this thing.” She told her secret. “I use nothing.” Yoko allowed me to feel her head. “The short stubbles of hair are what holds the fabric firmly and it’s surprising that when I ride it doesn’t come off,” she explained. However, when you do see her with the cone and long braid in varying colours — that calls for some adhesive. “Contact cement, it hurts (for the first 15 minutes) but that’s what I use.”

Where did that idea originate? “From the movie ‘Shogun Assassin’. My sons — they love Japanese animation and in that show one of the characters had the cones and the hair and I tried it,” she laughed. Of course, it took a while, maybe years, for her sons Tomo, 23, and Dax, 21, to get used to the new hairdo. (Tomo’s name is Japanese meaning “friend” and Dax’s was taken from the book “The Adventurers”.) It all started when she shaved her head bald the very first time. “It felt wonderful. I loved it, but I had to grow it back for my kids. They would bawl. Yes, they were embarrassed,” said the 47-year-old. So, why would Yoko who could fittingly be described as Chinese/Creole (since her father is pure Chinese and mother Creole) maintain a bald head when her job as flight attendant requires having a full head of hair? She listed more reasons than I anticipated: “I’m clean and I don’t have the hassle of styling, half my hair is grey, the style goes with everything, I can do it (shave) myself which cuts time at the hairdresser and saves money.”

No one, however, would know it’s the same Yoko when the senior BWIA West Indies Airways stewardess dresses in uniform and her “slamming wigs”. “It takes me seconds to put on and looks better than half the hairstyles I see,” she said. Her passengers would often compliment her on her look even going as far as asking where they could purchase the hair products she uses to achieve it. She’s always stumped for an answer. When she stops over in New York for two days or so, between flights, and transforms her image she gets the comments on the street — “girlfriend you’re gonna hurt somebody” or “girlfriend you got it going on.” She goes shopping for just about anything for her Maraval home or her store-size wardrobe. Mind you, she’s got numerous shades of all colours in swim wear, winter wear, casual wear, work attire. When she wanders in children’s clothing stores it has nothing to do with her kids. “I do fit into that too,” she informed. When not shopping, or touring the Swiss Alps, or visiting Stockholm and Germany, Yoko is whoosing in and out of traffic on her mountain bicycle every day. “I don’t think I could ever get back behind a steering wheel,” she could barely remember the last time she drove a car. Of course, the time spent with her boyfriend, Courtney Lange, ranks high on her list. Courtney’s a naval architect, the only naval architect in the Caribbean and the two share one passion “he loves Trinidad just as much as I do.”