Yoko’s dolls

WHAT started off as a way to deal with her anxiety has turned into a business for fashion icon and designer Yoko Fung.

Fung has come out with her own line of Rock-A-Bye Baby Dolls.

The 63-year-old has merged the crocheting she began doing to deal with her panic attacks and anxiety with the idea of having her own figurines. This has given birth to the Rock-A-Bye Dolls.

Fung has publicly discussed her battle with mental illness. In a 2015 interview with Newsday in which addressed her illness, Fung said, “I thought something was crawling in my intestines, some snake or some dragon, it was so painful, not knowing that it was mental...So I went through thousands of dollars of tests to see (what was wrong with me).”

The crocheting began, she said, in a recent interview, when she discovered she had extra time and that “it was kind of unnerving to have this extra time.”

“It (crocheting) helped me because in one of the sessions I had with the psychologist, she said I can keep myself busy doing something, because being so active in my lifestyle, I always had something to do and this illness, it just stopped me in my tracks.

“So she said ‘do something'."

That was when Fung began crocheting. And when she returned to her psychologist, the psychologist told her, "Yoko, you’re quite good at it. Why don’t you help the people in the clinic because they need some calming down too.”

She described crocheting as “serenity” for her. For five years she taught other people at the Barataria Mental Health and Wellness Centre “to also give back to the clinic.”

Before getting assistance through the clinic, “I had to pay thousands of dollars to people – shrinks, psychologists – $500 an hour, and then a very good friend of mine told me, ‘Yoko, you don’t have to pay for that.' So I went through St Ann’s, and I ended up in Barataria in the mental health clinic there. Phenomenal help. I became part of the team, because I gave crochet classes for five years to give back,” she said.

It cost Fung over $50,000 to care for her mental health. “I am famous. I am not rich...I am bordering on poor now,” she said.

But Fung is not looking for handouts, nor does she want to go “out with a donation sheet and a fundraising ticket, and I not begging nobody.”

Fung believes “if it was not for them (the wellness centre) I would not be here sitting making these comments.”

Blending her crocheting with the Rock-A-Bye dolls came when her granddaughter loaned her her doll called Mimi.

“My granddaughter – because I live three-storeys high and I am a freak and don’t get company – she is like, ‘Grandma, I am going to lend you Mimi to keep you company.’ So she brought Mimi and Mimi had on this piece of jumpsuit with dirty underwear.

“So, I have her next to my bed and I am looking at her and I am saying, ‘Girl, I’ve got to do something about that.’ So bam! One morning, I catch it and I make this outfit for her...,” Fung said.

Fung walked into Newsday’s Pembroke Street, Port of Spain office with her dolls Coco and Mimi. She and Mimi wore matching outfits – a yellow-and-orange crocheted skirt and top – while Coco, a bald, chocolate version of Mimi, wore a light yellow-green and pink dress. Fung has produced 50 of the dolls so far, along with matching accessories.

Fung received positive reactions from her friends to the doll and so decided to try designing dolls.

This was further helped when she met Stephanie Khan, her business development manager, through Khan’s sister Jasmine, who she met at an upmarket (a showcase for local artisans). Jasmine asked Khan to assist Fung and they began working together. Both Jasmine and Fung crochet.

Fung, initially, wanted to get a figurine of herself. She practises transcendental meditation and has achieved the rank of Sidha (a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM) who has accomplished the extensive training for the more advanced TM meditation.)

A fellow Sidha, who has a 3d printer, asked Fung why doesn’t she make a figurine of herself. “I said isn’t that a bit narcissistic and he said, 'no.' You’re a national icon and it is something to see'.”

She wanted a figurine with muscles “but there is no doll on the planet yet, or I have not seen it, with muscles. I wanted a bad-a-s b---h with a Yoko head on it.”

So, she then decided to do the Rock-A-Bye dolls. These are just the start of lines of dolls Fung hopes to create.

She has had a fruitful meeting so far about getting the figurines done and believes she will get them soon. The figurines, she said, will tell her own personal history at different times of her life.

For Khan, the dolls “will tell the story of different times of her life. What she was and what she is right now. It will be something to teach children who their icons are in TT because we don’t appreciate them. We wait until they pass away and then we want to post everything on social media. We can have replicas of them now.”

The dolls sport Fung’s unique style. She has even created a thong for them.

For those interested in buying the doll, she said it is a collector’s item, something that can be passed from “generation to generation.”

The dolls, Fung added, teach a new generation of people that “you can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do.”

She does all of the work herself, crocheting all of the outfits and accessories.

The dolls and other ventures, like her line of juice, are also her way of being self-sufficient. She also sells crocheted bags, phone cases and purses. Before turning Yoko Juice Master into a business, she would make 60 bottles of juice for “people that I loved and cared about.”

She has been getting an “overwhelming response” to the dolls and juices and Khan, she said, “is making all of my dreams come true.”

They hope partnerships can be made with organisations like Creative TT since: “She is an icon: a lot of young fashion designers look up to her,” Khan said.

They are also looking for a retail space from which to sell the dolls.

While many might question TT’s mental healthcare, for Fung, the help she received is phenomenal.

“It (TT’s mental healthcare system) is quite good because in a lot of countries in the world it is almost like a dungeon, a prison where we are like outcasts and we are treated really, really badly like we don’t belong on this planet.

“And mental healthcare here is phenomenal. They are so nice in every clinic. I don’t know if it is just me but I think it is everyone. I see how they treat everybody who comes through that door and it is phenomenal the kind of help that they get. Bless them,” she said.