Duncan & Prudence Our Blog

This year we decided we would take the cleaning process of our recycled screens into our own hands. Of course it’s always a sad exercise for us, deciding first which prints are to be expired (sniff, bye bye boxing gloves) and don’t worry, it’s very much based on your advice, dear customer. It’s not necessarily the fact that a print is popular, but whether or not its sales are steady over time. If it’s steady, then we keep it, it’s a classic and we’ve stumbled on a winner for the store. If the print was extremely popular when it was first released, but has since slowed down in sales, then we might keep it on for our own love’s sake for a wee bit longer, but eventually we expire it, and the sooner the better, to be honest. We like the thought of those trend setters that grabbed it at the start keeping for themselves a rare tee. That’s always good for business.
That said – if you were one of our customers that ordered the boxing gloves slung over your shoulder then, well, koudos my friend. That there is a groovy and now rare edition Duncan & Prudence tshirt.
We gathered for ourselves a capacity of silk screens quite early in our enterprise. We simply can’t afford to keep buying more and more of them, and if there were ways out there for them to get cleaned, we thought, well it’s better to recycle the prints, with that philosophy of cultivating rarity a nice bonus for customers. Our guys out in Petone – that’s Blueprint Imaging for those of you interested, I highly recommend their printing and imaging services – gave the team a full hour of their time showing us the process, the resources we’ll need, and what harm the chemicals we used might have on the environment. Tessa and Duncan designed a cleaning process that is least harmful, applying the chemical (already watered down) straight to the screen, then waterblasting it off in our courtyard.
Amanda and I thought Tessa looked cute in her Deane coveralls, rubber gloves and mask. We figure the grass in the courtyard can suffer the most damage, but the plants in our garden in fact got a nice misty shower and their soil is separated from the grass by quite a high ledge we built around it back in 2007.
Duncan is having his first five day week of the year, in order to clear his head a little for the final laborious task of illustrating all this next season’s designs. There’s been some strange work practices afoot, as there always is when the storyboard is being created. If you live or work with a designer then you might be able to commiserate: he’s either hidden away behind his office door- in foetal position before his laptop, all four walls around him covered in scraps and print outs, many of them of the exact same image, only the lines are one millimetre thicker, or they have turned into dots- or out dancing a manic jig and playing us his new FAVORITE song on The Mintchicks album, The Doves album, Sparticus R, Royskopp. Oh my god. Poor dear needed a day off, I thought, so I hope he’s sleeping off some jitters today.
I have an arty project of my own. The upstairs is being cleaned and prepped for painting and varnishing, one room at a time. Duncan got our apartment bedroom done in January. It’s all ready for us to work on. Look! There’s already a gorgeous lightweight denim duvet cover, pillow cases with tartan trim (that’s what’s strengthening your waistbands on the jeans), but there are a tonne of ideas still only germinating at this stage. We won’t market anything until it’s all good to go into production. In the mean time, it’s my onus to prep the staff room, Duncan’s office, and the kitchen for their makeovers too. Here’s a shot of the staff room now. That’s a little pressure I’ve put on myself to get the job done, and show you the staff room after makeover shot in next month’s blog post. Gulp.
We are all excited this week because this Sunday is the day we all meet up at our place for pizza and then walk down to see Dylan Moran. For those of you who haven’t a clue, there’s a Comedy Festival going on in Wellington, and there are some great shows happening every night. I of course have been missing them all, and live through them only vicariously via Radio Activ. But we splashed out on tickets for the team to see our man Dylan, because we’re all fans of Black Books, and Amanda and Tessa sometimes even call Duncan Bernhard behind his back. I sometimes call him my little black storm cloud right to his face. And in true Bernhard Black fashion, the nasty observation seems to make him stand taller, resolved or resigned in his dishevelled sleep deprived mood.
Of course, our Bernhard wears quality, designer black, and ironically, he never drinks, and is constantly fooling most people with the biggest grin wrapped around his face. Oops, I’m revealing my man’s secrets. If you want to know more, find Tessa and Amanda and tell them you’re from the union.
We were lucky enough to win cake tin tickets to see the Hurricanes last weekend, thanks to my boy James entering most competitions he gets his hands on. Did you know that after the match you can go onto the field, just like in the olden days, and the players all stick around signing autographs and posing for shots? The field was covered in young boys and – no, not their fathers – their mothers, me case in point, giggling and telling their sons to get closer in while they clicked away. In the end, I stopped even using my son as an excuse, and just followed this hotty down the line. I love living in the twenty first century. Big fan of hunky boys, ready to pose for my objective gaze. Rugby? What rugby? Just kidding. Go the Hurricanes! You are on fire, on and off the field. I may not be your biggest fan, but please, come in to my store for your free gift anyway boys, and I don’t mean a tshirt, unless that entails you trying it on…