Every once in a while, as I throw open my closet doors to figure out something to put on, I ask, can’t I wear slippers to an interview? Can’t I just throw on loose pants with an elastic waistband and a wild batik print to an event? What about tie-dye outside a beach setting, like at the office?
The answer of course is usually no, but a little part of me dies inside. Those without the constraints of corporate culture or outside the intensely analyzed world of media and fashion can let loose and live as if life was a beach, and summer was endless. Nullah has been selling the gypset lifestyle since 2003, offering beaded tunics, harem pants and flowy, ethnic dresses as an affordable fashion alternative to regular mall fare. “The three of us sisters were really into fashion and made dressing up part of our everyday ritual. But we wanted to look different,” says owner Lani Beltran. “When we travel we’d go to hole-in-the-wall stores to find things that would look different here. They didn’t have to be expensive.”
The sisters turned their passion into Nullah, which originally opened on Jupiter Street, Makati, and it became one of those in-the-know stores that drew loyal clientele, particularly from embassy people and the Latin Club. The favorable response led the sisters to open a store in Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, and then a few other malls. “But then that made it so commercialized,” Beltran recalls. “When we shop for the store it was like shopping for ourselves. But it was getting difficult when there was too much demand for one item. We got tired.” Once it stopped becoming a hobby and more like work, Beltran — whose primary job is in real estate development — decided to close the mall stores and create the space Nullah now occupies on Jupiter Street.
Nullah just launched its online store, which was born out of prompts from her Guamanian contacts to open a store in Guam, which has a lot of American retail brands but nothing that really suited their island lifestyle. She’ll be there later this month to put up a billboard announcing the store. “It’s is a small area, if you just put up one billboard the whole of Guam will know,” she quips.
As to how she developed her hippie-boho sense of style, Beltran describes, “Traveling, but not so much that as exposure. Growing up we weren’t well off, so we had to be creative and resourceful. I was the type who would buy tela and just design things, and add little accents.” Even now when she has to dress more conservatively for real estate meetings, she always throws on a scarf or a pair of earrings dug up from some exotic locale, it’s that little breath of air to remind you that life can still be as enchanting as the very first time you discovered a bustling market or deserted beach in a foreign, faraway place.
* * *
Nullah is at Doña Consolacion Bldg., 122 Jupiter St., Bel-Air, Makati and online at www.nullahonline.com