Yabette’s Story

Alfaro Family Portrait by Eartha L. Goodwin

Yabette, Alex and Ian Alfaro

Our Story, by Yabette:

Swankety Swank was organically born in my transition from maiden to mother. Being disenchanted with the music scene (ironically, just having finished my audio engineering certification in Arizona and working at a post production house here in San Francisco), I found myself experiencing 9-11 and the Red Alert Terrorist Security Scares of 2001. While wrestling with my feelings of failure, depression, and restlessness, motherhood grabbed hold of me. I began to finally stay in the same location for the first time in ten years.  Then I began to look at things instead of hearing them. I saw the Earth crying for help. I saw the ugliness of plastic and the drabness of conformity all around me. I asked myself how I could transform my own life into art. I asked myself what I should be doing to “think Globally, act Locally”.

Our son Ian, busy in the Christmas 2009 window

My own Mother had just given me a sewing machine when all of this was ruminating within me. I began with bags. Sick of the mass produced cheapness that my consumer ad washed mind was passively purchasing, I started creating my own bags as works of fabric collage. This simple start showed me that transforming my life into art could be possible. I started applying my lost music creativity to all that I could see in my immediate environment. I decided that my lack of funds would not stop me from living in beauty. I tentatively began to paint for the first time in my life and saw what was possible. I started dreaming. I studied interior design, woodworking, furniture, fabrics and all manner of creation books from the SF Library with my infant Ian in tow. I transformed my Baker Street apartment into a special nesting haven and I continued dreaming. I worked at my sewing machine in my third floor window and looked at dogs running around Alamo Square and the great expanse of sky beyond the rooftops and dreamed up my shop.

As I pondered the name of this place to showcase my furniture art and fabric creations, I thought of how I wanted it to be fun, original, and to redefine what is considered “swanky”. For example, is a table made in China under unfair conditions, trekked across the ocean at the expense of Mother Nature and sold cheap at a corporate retailer that devours Mom and Pop Shops really that swanky? As a matter of fact, in relation to its true cost environmentally, socially, and locally it’s not really so cheap either, is it? Our children will pay dearly for today’s bargain buys. All of this was an experiment in the current capitalist way, and I set out with the intentions to be a profitable alternative with a Conscious Consumer Commodities guideline for products.

I knew that my own boutique was necessary as I had already tried to sell my furniture through other shops and found them highly uninterested or a really big hassle. I did have good store experiences selling my bags and participated in trunk sales, networking with artists along the way. I realized that I could include the handmade work of other artists along with my bags and furniture. Having experience as an artist on the other side, my shopkeeper self tried to be as accessible and fair to them as possible. My goal was and still is for all hard working, dedicated artists to thrive. I dream that handmade, local, and creative re-use items could replace the Walmarts of the Earth as more and more people choose to support their neighborhood, their city, and their country as often as possible.