By Noha El-Hennawy

In her Astoria kitchen, Kazuki Kozuru-Salifoska’s sewing machine sits next to her stove, and piles of black silky fabric hang from hooks where she usually keeps her cast-iron pans. A headless mannequin stands opposite shelves filled with rice.

It is from this cramped space that the one time fashion designer has started a new clothing line for toddlers. And, not just the pretty-in-pink stuff either.

Earlier this year, Kozuru-Salifoska decided to go against conventional fashion wisdom that frowns on black outfits for toddlers. Her newly launched “Baby Noir” line puts children in a color long associated with grief and mourning. The 38-year-old immigrant considers her one-year-old daughter Kharin, who runs around the kitchen dressed in black, as her “muse.”

“I had a hard time finding stuff that was not pink and ugly. I did not find anything black,” Kozuru-Salifoska said while cajoling her restless child in Japanese. “New Yorkers wear black all the time. It is not that I wanted to dress her in black all day but to find the black option.”

Many economic downturns wind up creating a new generation of entrepreneurs, and Kozuru-Salifoska may be one of them.

“I do believe that things happen for a reason,” she said. “Having a baby right in the middle of the recession and the company closing down and not finding black clothes was pointing into this direction of starting this business and seeing where it goes.”

Start-ups are inherently risky, but Kozuru-Salifoska’s friends consider her hardworking. However, her creative outlets are not restricted to fashion. She has been a drummer for almost 13 years and released her first CD last year. Her husband of three years, Seido Salifoska, also shares her passion for the drums as a Macedonian tabla player.

Kozuru-Salifoska grew up in the rural Japanese town of Fukui, which she equated to the West Virginia countryside. She described herself as a rebellious character even as a child, unwilling to toe the line or live up to others’ expectations.

“At school, I always felt I was an outsider because I was weird,” she said.  “I was a little nerdy. I did not like the same stuff that other kids liked.”

Kozuru-Salifoska moved to the United States in the early 1990s. Financed by her grandmother, she studied fine arts at Montgomery College in Maryland. She graduated from Parsons in 1996 and worked as a designer for several companies including Baby Gap, Eileen Fisher and Bernadette Conte.

Her freelance fashion designer friend, Gaetano Canello, looked back with delight on the days they worked together at Carmen Marc Valvo.

“We both like to eat, and we always had lunch together,” Canello said. “She cares about her fellow humans, she is very generous who is the kind of person who cheers for the underdog.”

Kozuru-Salifoska is now finding herself the underdog with her own fashion start-up in which she has invested $3,000 so far. Since May, she has produced more than 100 pieces for newborns to six-year-olds, storing them in blue Ikea plastic bags in her living room closet. The bags overflow with little black ruffled hats, T-shirts and onesies with printed drawings of penguins or roses, as well as polka dot and eyelet dresses lined with cotton voile.

“The way to get around it being all black is to have printed colors and a black voile on it,” Kozuru-Salifoska explained. “It is still black, but it is beautiful. I would like to think of it as a colorful black.”

Her work is sold at Kristees, a clothing store in Astoria and a gift shop in Flushing. She also sells her wares at weekend flea markets.

Reaction to her clothing is mixed, she said. “Most people who say anything to me tell me it is a great idea,” Kozuru-Salifoska said. “They all say they were talking about that they cannot find black outfit for babies. But more than once, shoppers say that black children’s clothing  ‘is just a horrible idea, bad, bad, to which I say it is not for everyone.’”

She looks forward to breaking even next year.

Kozuru-Salifoska with her daughter kharin in her kitchen in Astoria. (Above)