2,179 articles
Worry doll
Worry dolls, or muñecas quitapenas, are tiny handmade Guatemalan figures of likely Maya origin; users tell one worry to each doll, place it under the pillow at night, and the tradition says the doll takes the worry away.
Worshipful Company of Drapers
The Worshipful Company of Drapers, a Great Twelve livery company of the City of London ranked third in precedence, chartered by Edward III in 1364, incorporated 1438, holder of the 1439 arms grant, based at Drapers' Hall.
Worshipful Company of Weavers
The Worshipful Company of Weavers is the oldest City of London livery company, recorded in the 1130 Pipe Roll and chartered by Henry II around 1155; today it supports the UK textile industry and offender rehabilitation charities.
Worsted
Worsted: wool yarn and fabric spun from combed, parallel long-staple fibers, giving smooth, strong, tightly twisted yarn and hard-finished cloth; named for Worstead, Norfolk; the combed counterpart to carded woolen, used for suiting and fine knitwear.
Wudan (武旦)
Wudan (武旦) is the martial female role type in Chinese opera, split into short-fight wudan and long-armor daomadan, known for weapon-throwing tricks (打出手), acrobatic combat, and roles like Sun Erniang and Mu Guiying.
Wycinanki
Wycinanki, pronounced vee-chee-non-kee, are Polish folk papercuttings, colored designs cut with sheep shears to decorate rural cottages, developed from the 19th century in several regions.
Xuan paper
Xuan paper (宣纸) is a handmade Chinese paper from Jing County, Anhui, made of blue sandalwood bark and rice straw and prized for calligraphy and ink painting.
Yana Gupta
Yana Gupta (Jana Synková, born 1979, Brno) is a Czech model and actress in India, known as the Lakme face of 2001 and for the item number "Babuji zara dheere chalo" in Dum (2003); married to and divorced from artist Satyakam Gupta, she later turned to music and writing.
Yangshao painted pottery
Yangshao painted pottery (仰韶彩陶) is the painted earthenware of the Neolithic Yangshao culture in the middle Yellow River valley, flourishing from about 5000 to 3000 BCE.
Yarn
Yarn is a long, continuous strand of textile fibers or filaments twisted or bonded together, linking raw fiber to finished fabric through weaving, knitting, braids, ropes, and cords.
Yarn bombing
Yarn bombing, also called guerrilla knitting or yarn storming, is street art attaching knitted or crocheted items to public objects. Started by Magda Sayeg in Houston, 2005, with crew Knitta Please; often unsanctioned, tied to craftivism.
Yarn weight
Yarn weight classifies yarn by strand thickness, not ball weight. The US Craft Yarn Council system uses categories 0–7 defined by gauge; UK and Australian ply names (4-ply, 8-ply, aran) differ, and wraps per inch identifies unlabeled yarn.
Yasmin Le Bon
Yasmin Le Bon (née Parvaneh), British supermodel born 1964 in Oxford to an Iranian father and English mother; married Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon in 1985; about 300 magazine covers, Wallis and Winser London designs, still walking for Fendi in 2025.
Yayoi pottery
Yayoi pottery (弥生土器) is the plain, thin-walled unglazed earthenware of Japan's Yayoi period, roughly 300 B.C. to 300 A.D., when rice farming spread through the islands.
Yellow badge
Yellow badge (Judenstern, Jewish badge, yellow star): cloth mark ordered onto Jews' clothing, from 8th-century Muslim caliphs through the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council to the Nazi-era Star of David decree of September 1, 1941.
Yellow ribbon
Yellow ribbon: a colored ribbon worn or displayed to remember someone far away, welcome them home, or support a cause. Modern use began with Penne Laingen in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, inspired by the 1972 Tony Orlando and Dawn song; earlier yellow ribbon uses include women's suffrage.
Yinka Shonibare
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (born 1962, London) is a British-Nigerian artist known for Dutch wax fabric sculptures and Nelson's Ship in a Bottle; MBE 2005, CBE 2019, RA 2013.
Yixing ware
Yixing ware (宜兴紫砂, zisha, literally purple clay) is an unglazed Chinese stoneware produced in Yixing, Jiangsu province, best known for its teapots and prized since the Ming dynasty.
Yohji Yamamoto (山本耀司)
Yohji Yamamoto (山本耀司), Japanese designer born 1943 in Tokyo; founded Y's in 1972 and debuted his eponymous black, oversized, asymmetric ready-to-wear label in Paris in 1981; also creative director of the Y-3 Adidas collaboration since 2002.
YOOX Net-a-Porter Group
YOOX Net-a-Porter Group (YNAP) was an Italian online luxury fashion retail group headquartered in Milan, formed in 2015 by the merger of YOOX and Net-A-Porter.
Yoruba beadwork
Yoruba beadwork is the bead-embroidered royal art of the Yoruba peoples of Nigeria and Benin, best known for the veiled beaded crowns worn by sacred kings.
Yoruba shrine sculpture
Yoruba shrine sculpture is the art made for the shrines and altars of the Yoruba peoples of southwestern Nigeria and Benin, emphasizing enlarged heads as the seat of spiritual power.
Yubitsume (指詰め)
Yubitsume (指詰め), also enkozume, is the yakuza ritual of amputating one's own little finger as apology or atonement; historically widespread, now legally prohibited when coerced and declining among younger members.
Yukata (浴衣)
Yukata (浴衣), from yukatabira, is Japan's unlined cotton summer kimono, worn skin-to-skin with geta and a hanhaba or heko obi. Originating as Heian bathing wear, it spread via Edo bathhouses and Meiji chusen dyeing to become festival and ryokan wear.
Yūki tsumugi
Yūki tsumugi (結城紬) is a Japanese silk kimono fabric handwoven around Yūki City, Ibaraki Prefecture, and Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture, designated an Important Intangible Cultural Property in 1956 and added to UNESCO's heritage list in 2010.
Yumi Nu
Yumi Nu (born 1996, Englewood, New Jersey) is an American plus-size model, singer-songwriter on Dim Mak, and founder of Blueki; first Asian curve model in Vogue and the 2022 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover.
Yup'ik clothing
Yup'ik clothing: traditional dress of western Alaska, including fur atkuk parkas of muskrat, squirrel, and caribou, waterproof gut-skin rain parkas, and the cotton qaspeq (kuspuk).
Yūzen
Yūzen (友禅染, yūzen-zome) is a Japanese paste-resist dyeing technique for kimono, named after the Kyoto fan painter Miyazaki Yūzensai and developed in the Genroku era.
Yves Saint Laurent (designer)
Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008), born in Oran, Algeria, was the French couturier who ran Dior at 21, founded his own house with Pierre Bergé in 1961, and created Le Smoking, the Mondrian dress, and couture-house luxury ready-to-wear.
Yvie Oddly
Yvie Oddly is the stage name of Jovan Bridges, an American drag queen based in Denver, Colorado, who won season 11 of RuPaul's Drag Race in 2019.