Elizabeth Wilson started it 35 years ago with a few shirts and jackets she'd made from old Japanese quilt covers and antique kimono. She'd fallen hard for Asian textiles while a grad student in Chinese art history at Columbia, ended up in Kansas City when her husband got a museum job there, and decided to take a shot at turning her love of beautiful old cloth into a business.

She's still there, but now she has help — a production manager with a good eye for design, a crackerjack pattern maker, and a team of "very, very skilled" women who can cut and sew practically any fabric, no matter how stretchy, slippery or crunchy. (Which is crucial, since so many of the fabrics she uses are one of a kind.) Everything is made in Kansas City, and her only shop is there. She says longtime clients love telling their fancy globetrotting friends that they do their serious clothes shopping in Kansas.

She also comes to them, staging trunk shows, like the one I checked out in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago, in 10 cities. (Check her Web site for the itinerary.) She says 80 percent of her business comes from return customers; new customers hear about her from friends, the way I did.

She's still collecting and using luminous silks from discarded vintage kimono to make shirts and jackets, but she's branched out a little. The silk made for kimono is narrow — anywhere from 5 inches to 12 inches or 14 inches wide. Sometimes there isn't enough to make a whole jacket, so she and her staff have learned to combine patterns that sing in harmony in strip patchwork.

To use precious leftover scraps, they sandwich scattered squares of vintage silks between two sheer layers of contemporary silk, and applique more squares to the surface of the fabric sandwich. The effect is like splendid confetti.

Wilson says she's also probably the biggest fashion customer of the distinguished Japanese fabric maker Nuno Corp., known for combining modern textile technology, traditional design ideas and both conventional and unconventional fibers in experimental ways. She makes coordinating pieces — pants, skirts, etc. — in modern silks.

She doesn't call what she does "wearable art" or "art to wear." For one thing, so many of her clothes are designed to showcase the beauty of fabric made tens or hundreds of years ago by brilliant anonymous artisans, and she wouldn't want to seem to be taking credit for it. Besides which, she thinks self-conscious artiness can get in the way of making good clothes.

Her focus isn't on self-expression; it's on making clothes that please her customers, fit into their lives, and make them look good. She knows that the single most crucial question to ask about any garment hanging on a rack in a store, whether it's a $20 tank top or a $2,000 silk shirt, isn't whose label is in it, or how much it costs, or whether you saw it or something like it on a movie star in a magazine. The question that finally matters is: "Does it make you look better than what you came in wearing?"

Odd, how many people in the fashion business don't seem to know that, or else just don't care.

"There's a whole group of people who seek status by what they wear," Wilson says. "And a whole group who don't care what they wear. And then there are women who know it's fun to dress well. ... Buying good clothes is a pleasure. You wear it 100 times, you get 100 compliments."

She knows from experience that this becomes more difficult with age. Shopping in a typical mall is disheartening: "I don't see things that make my eyes excited and that look good on me. ..."

"Nobody makes anything for women over 50, so some people just give up. They get invited somewhere, they haul out that old black dress again — because it's not fun to shop."

And when you do find something that works, it disappears almost immediately: "If you bought pants that fit perfectly last year and want more? Oh no. Do they have this jacket in a bigger size? Or a smaller size? No."

This is why half her business is custom. A customer wants this jacket, but in that fabric. Another wants the same jacket, but shorter. Another wants pants to work with the jacket, but she wants a narrower cut. Still another wants the jacket she bought 10 years ago in a new color, with a little more room in the hips.

It's also why Wilson prefers to sell her clothes from her Kansas City store or through trunk shows. She can be sure her customers are getting what they want, instead of what a store buyer thinks they ought to want.

This is one reason her clothes are expensive. Though you could argue that they cost less than those of many designers, and last longer. "We have people who'll say, 'I'd just love to buy another jacket, but they're so expensive!'" Wilson says, "and I'll ask, 'How long have you been wearing your old one?' and she'll say, 'Oh, about 25 years.'"

Write to Patricia McLaughlin c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, Mo. 64106 or patsy.mcl@verizon.net.