There’s a not-so-well-kept secret about how a Connecticut business in an historic house has been attracting customers from across that state for more than 50 years.
It’s fashion, according to the owner.
“I wouldn’t be here for 55 years, if not for the clothes,” said owner Jeff Kennedy, as he took a break outside the store, a 19th-century house that is also his home. “We’re a destination for clothes. People drive an hour or more away to shop here.”
Since its beginnings, then as a small shop in the old Kent railroad station, Foreign Cargo has become a beloved resource for imported clothing, gifts and antiques, a result of the travels of its founders, Dr. and Mrs. John and Olga Kennedy.
On a recent afternoon, three customers happily walked out of the store, laden with shopping bags filled with treasures they said they discovered inside.
“We had fun today,” one of the women said, hugging Jeff Kennedy, second-generation owner and son of Olga and John Kennedy.
The younger Kennedy, who worked side-by-side with his mother for many years before she died in 2021, has continued the family’s legacy by providing shoppers with imported clothes and gifts from India, Nepal, Indonesia and other Asian countries, Africa and India, as well as the U.S. and Europe.
His mother first set up shop in a space in the Kent train station, before moving into the house at 17 North Main St. Olga, he said, built a loyal following of customers.
Kennedy is a father of two: a teenage son in high school, and a daughter, now attending college. He and his wife, Apple, reside in Kent.
Inside the store, fall fashions are in full display; Kennedy and his small staff are receiving deliveries daily, he said, of new creations by clothing vendors including Habitat, Charlie B, Cut Loose and All About Her, a maker of embroidered silk and cotton tunics.
“I try to have as much cotton as possible, because good, quality cotton isn’t as easy to find today,” he said. “It’s all about the cost, but I’ve been lucky to have a loyal following, of people who shop here.”
Hats and scarves, mittens and gloves are also already available, along with handbags, totes, coats and jackets. The colors this year are varied as always, but there’s lots of navy, soft gray and black in the new collections for fall and winter.
In the rear “sale room,” shoppers can browse the racks that are laden with summer clothes: dresses, skirts, tops and long pants, shorts and T-shirts, offered in hues of turquoise, lime green, coral pink and white.
And mingled with those clothes, all around the store, are items of every description: mother-of-pearl boxes, handmade sterling silver jewelry: earrings, necklaces, rings and bracelets.
There are toys and puppets, dolls and statues, handmade Christmas ornaments, statuary large and small, and brass bells in a variety of sizes, hammered in India. There’s kitchenware, dining plates and candlesticks, woven tablecloths and embroidered blankets.
The store’s displays also include antique sculpture, statues and other items from Asia, collected over many years, that were once in a gallery on the upper level of the store. The gallery was Jeff Kennedy’s pride and joy, he said.
“But times change,” he said with a laugh. “I needed more space and took a room upstairs for an office, and eventually we renovated the second floor.
“The gallery was tough to manage because often there’s only one person in the store,” he said. “I got ripped off once; I had a guy upstairs stealing while his partner, a woman, worked me down here. So after a long time, we decided to close it.”
Much of the collection in the gallery is now incorporated into the store itself: brass Buddha statues, masks, clothing and other artifacts that hail from Tibet, Indonesia, Somalia, India, the Congo and Nepal. How those pieces came to be in a gallery in Kent is a story itself.
Travel abroad
The youngest of seven children, Kennedy was born in Cambodia and grew up in Thailand and Laos. Their father, a doctor, was then employed by USAID, which was recently incorporated into the U.S. State Department by President Trump’s administration, according to the Associated Press.
“USAID hired medical professionals from all over the world to help develop health programs for underserved countries,” Jeff Kennedy said. “That’s what my father did, and so our family lived in Asia for quite a while.”
The family was living in Laos in 1975 when a Communist movement took over the country, Kennedy remembered. After the Kennedys were held by house arrest in their home for nearly a week, he and a younger sibling and their mother were allowed to leave, with only one suitcase each.
Their father was detained for another week and was then released. The family flew to Bangkok, Thailand’s capitol, to wait for the father and husband to join them.
“I was 14 when that happened,” Kennedy said. “My prized possession was my new guitar, and I packed socks in the suitcase, around the guitar. Those were the only things I took with me.”
USAID doctors like Kennedy were forced to leave other posts when the government changed, according to his son. “We were kicked out of Indonesia and Cambodia, previous to that,” Jeff Kennedy said. “After Laos, we came home (to Kent) in April 1975.”
More traveling and residencies followed: the family lived in African countries including Somalia and Zaire, in the Congo. Meanwhile, they had a home in Kent, and when Olga visited, she brought gift items and sold them in the train station space.
“In the beginning, she sent home jewelry, scarves, gifts, and antiques,” Jeff Kennedy said.
“We were back and forth, on buying trips … We went to India, then Nepal, and then we’d come back; then we’d go to Afghanistan, and then we’d come back,” he said.
“That’s how the collection and the inventory got here, over the years. My parents were collectors, and while they were in Africa, my older siblings would run the store here.”
Being the oldest business in Kent is a source of pride Kennedy and his family, who remembers when Davis IGA opened, and when the Fife and Drum began its long reign on North Main Street. Kent Pizza Garden is another longtime business, Kennedy said.
“And, there used to be three gas stations, but they weren’t convenience stores, so you had to find a place to get a coffee and a doughnut and the paper,” Kennedy said. “Crawford’s Market was for groceries, and there was an A&P market on Main Street, where you could get the paper.”
The culture of Kent, with its many art galleries, restaurants and shops, is a welcoming one, with an easy pace, Kennedy said.
“Kent’s a mix of everything,” he said. “We have beautiful lakes, parks and trails that attract people from all over. We have prep schools, which help our economy, like the Kent School and South Kent School. They like us because we have a town that’s safe, close by and walkable, and I don’t know how many prep schools have that advantage.
“We have hikers, weekenders, locals; it’s a great mix,” Kennedy said. “Those visitors often become residents, they become part of the community. It’s a nice town.”
Visit Foreign Cargo at 17 North Main Street in Kent. To reach them, call 860-927-3900, or email jeff.kennedy246@earthlink.net.