Designing anything she likes
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Deeandra: Hoping to get into sculpting, pottery and painting
Minnie, Deeandra Bulner’s one-woman online venture, that offers a range from playful handmade accessories to quirky shirts, has been both challenging and rewarding, the young designer tells Smriti Daniel. The design market opposite Viharamahadevi Park is open for business – unfortunately, Deeandra Bulner’s stall isn’t. In fact it doesn’t even have a table. It’s already near noon and Deeandra is remembering why she dislikes this sort of thing as she tries to pull everything together. However, 45 minutes later the little stall is welcoming a steady stream of visitors. One friend has put together a price list, another carefully writes ‘Minnie’ on a board and pins it to the tablecloth. The table itself is laden with little items – jewellery, folded shirts and the miniatures that Deeandra makes herself.
Each item is something of a signature design. The shirts are Minnie’s most popular offering. Making them in small batches of around 10 ensures a particular piece tends to be available only in one or two sizes at most. The cut, with its buttoned up collar and easy fit is easily recognizable but it’s the prints that really set them apart. Deeandra has an appreciation of the quirky – one of her most requested shirts is an eye-popping pink, dotted with cheerful multi-coloured pineapples.
The handmade accessories she pairs with the clothes are made up of unusual things – bits of feather and paper, chains of bronze, squares of felt and plastic, blocks of wood and clay. “There’s a lot of hit and miss, what you see out there is done and redone three to four times to get to that point,” the designer confesses. Some ideas clearly require more work to realise than others – for instance she’s also selling miniatures you can wear as a pendant. The latest batch references the universe of Game of Thrones with tiny replicas of substances made infamous in it – red liquid for poisonous Widow’s Blood, neon green gel for explosive Wildfire.
It’s a playful, self-assured collection, but it took Deeandra a while to muster the courage to put it – and herself – out there. “I could have started this a long time ago,” she says. “I didn’t have enough confidence to put it out, I was always fearful that I needed to get a proper job.” While she did take the latter route, working in corporate communications, she found the idea that would become Minnie wouldn’t quite leave her alone.
Accessories made up of unusual things
At 26, she felt like it was time to explore a little and see if she could work it out. She says she’s surprised by how well the business has been received. “I was actually surprised, even when I started my page, I did it so secretly.” She agonised over things like her logo and brand name, and on the first day after she posted on Facebook she didn’t have the courage to see if the page was getting likes, herself – she relied on very close friends to report back to her. She’s glad she took on the challenge now – “It’s been surprisingly rewarding.”
For those who know her, it must have felt quite natural. Deeandra’s previous stints have included being the costume designer for the Mind Adventures production ‘Paraya’. For a while, that was what she did best, working with actor and director Ruvin de Silva on different productions ranging from ‘After Class’ to school productions of Shakespeare. She’s always been artistic and has even pursued formal studies, spending two years at the Academy of Design in Colombo, but Deeandra felt she didn’t want to limit herself to clothes alone.
For Minnie, she’s designing “anything I like, whatever I look around and feel is lacking, even if it’s a bunch of nice coasters”. If she sees someone doing something she finds interesting, she likes to invite herself to apprentice under them so she can learn. “I’m always invading someone’s space to get things done.” After this interview, Deeandra has plans to go to Pettah, where she has a little network of shops whose owners are happy to tell her when they have new stocks. She’ll spend hours sifting through all the options before she finds what she’s looking for. “Everything I use is sourced locally, I go hunting in all these tiny places,” she says. “Sometimes it’s not successful, sometimes the shop I went to two weeks ago is now selling bed sheets but it’s also fun looking for things.”
That Minnie is small and exclusive is down in part to intent and in part to necessity. “It’s completely a one-woman show,” says Deeandra who has had to learn to manage her own finances, run a largely online business and manage her own marketing campaign. While she’d “rather just be the person who makes it all,” she’s finding it can be an uphill task. It hasn’t diluted her ambition though. Looking forward, she says she’d like to get into all sorts of design – sculpting, pottery and painting. “I’m not limiting myself and saying what I do now is the only stuff I’ll do. I hope there will be many new things in a couple of months.”