Two sisters and a room full of drying racks
We started because the flowers we were given always died before the week was out.
Why we gave up on fresh
Fiyaa started in a spare room in 2020 and is now the first floor of a house on Nirolhu Magu.
We began by selling fresh flowers, like everybody else, and spent a year being quietly unhappy about it. Cut flowers reach this country twice a week by air and then have to survive a climate they were not grown for. In a warm room four days is a good run. Customers were spending eight hundred rufiyaa on something that was in a bin by the weekend, and there is no amount of skill that fixes that.
So we changed what we sell. Almost everything here is dried, pressed or preserved: flowers, grasses, seed heads and foliage, some of it dried in this room and some of it bought in. Kept out of direct sunlight and away from a fan, a dried arrangement holds its colour and its shape for a year, and people keep them far longer than that.
The second consequence was one we did not expect. Because nothing wilts, we can put a gift in a box and send it to an island, which is something no fresh flower shop in this country can honestly offer. A good part of the studio's work is now boxes going out on boats.
The two of us
Aminath Shaha
Started the studio in a spare room in 2020. She does the pressing and the wedding keepsakes, and she is the one who will tell you which of y...
Hawwa Shama
Builds the gift boxes, answers the messages and drives the deliveries. If a box is going on a boat, she is the one who takes it to the harbo...
Keeping a dried arrangement well
How long will a dried arrangement last?
A year is what we promise and most people keep them far longer.
What shortens it is direct sunlight, which fades colour within weeks, and moving air from a fan or an air conditioner, which makes dried stems brittle. Away from both, in an ordinary room, it will look the same next Ramadan as it does today.
Do they need water or anything else?
Nothing at all, and water would ruin them. Do not mist them, do not put them in a vase with water in it, and do not keep them in a bathroom.
Dust them every few months by blowing gently or using a hairdryer on its coolest setting from a distance. That is the whole of the care.
Will the colours change?
Natural dried colours soften slowly and pleasantly. Dyed stems fade faster and they fade unevenly in sunlight, which is why we tell you which stems in your arrangement are dyed.
For a preserved wedding bouquet the colours change during the drying rather than afterwards. White goes cream, red goes darker, and we show you the result before anything is framed.
Come and see the studio
Nirolhu Magu, Hulhumalé, by appointment. Message us and we will tell you when we are in.