Jewelry designer has a bead on success with Paris show

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This article was published 06/02/2022 (1010 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Handmade beaded earrings from Winnipeg will adorn the lobes of supermodels at Paris Fashion Week later this month.

When she started Bead N Butter amid the pandemic, Jessie Pruden could have never in a “trillion billion years” imagined that her creations would one day be worn on a catwalk at one of the world’s biggest high-fashion events.

“It feels really surreal,” she says over the phone. “I, personally, am not fashionable — I’ve worn sweatpants, I think, for the past five months — but I love fashion and I love looking at it.”

Pruden started beading after a work injury cut her restaurant serving career short. She tapped into her family’s long history of Métis beadwork and taught herself how to make intricate, colourful earrings via YouTube tutorials.

She’s been selling her wares online since 2020 and has amassed more than 18,000 followers on Instagram (@bead_n_butter).

The opportunity to attend Fashion Week came out of the blue at the end of January. Pruden recently partnered with Flying Solo, a New York retailer, and was asked to join the shop’s Paris runway show after another designer dropped out. The decision was a no-brainer.

“I said yes and I’ll figure out all the logistics afterwards,” she says. “I don’t have the money for it, but I knew that my family and my friends and my community would help me out.”

Attending Fashion Week is a costly endeavour. Registration comes with guaranteed runway placement, media and networking opportunities but can cost thousands of dollars. To raise the $3,000 needed to hold her spot, plus travel expenses, Pruden launched an online raffle with prizes donated by dozens of local makers and retailers. (Tickets are available at beadnbutter.ca; winners will be drawn Feb. 11.)

Within days, she had raised the registration and was well on her way to funding the travel for herself and several members of her business team.

“We’ll be able to go as a group, which is really amazing to be able to share this with the people who have helped me get to this place,” she says.

While flying across the world during the pandemic feels like a significant risk — especially since Pruden has stayed home for much of the last two years — it’s one that is worth the potential rewards. As a maker who relies largely on social media to sell products, the chance to meet new retail buyers could be a boon for the business.

“It would be really nice to have a steady stream of orders to be fulfilling, so that I don’t have to rely so much on pushing stuff (online)… social media is so fickle that I never really know what my income is week-to-week,” she says. “That, to me, is an invaluable opportunity to be hobnobbing with these folks that could get me to the next level.”

At the same time, being able to showcase her craft and her culture on a global stage is equal parts daunting and exciting.

“To have beadwork represented in such a high venue internationally feels unreal,” Pruden says. “I think about my auntie who lives out in the country and beads in her tiny house making these beautiful moccasins… that (practice) coming from her and then to me and then to Paris just feels like a lot.”

It’s a responsibility she doesn’t take lightly. “I think with more of an audience on (beading), then Indigenous voices also get to be heard and when people start paying more attention in any avenue, then we get to put more of our stories out there and more of our issues out there.”

Pruden will be taking some of her most popular Bead N Butter designs to Paris, where eight of her earrings will be featured alongside work by other designers during a runway show on Feb. 28 at a venue near the Arc de Triomphe.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney