Writer: Karla Walsh
Photographer: Duane Tinkey
The brand Design Fetish started close to home for Deshara Bohanna.
She’d always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but as the single mother of 8-year-old twin girls, she worried about launching her own company and losing the stability of a full-time job.
Her business—a “luxury, couture line of florals, centerpieces, wreaths, garlands—anything botanical,” as Bohanna describes it—arose in an unexpected way in the fall of 2016.
“I started by decorating my neighborhood, and it grew from there,” she says. What was once just a hobby quickly evolved into a paying side profession two months later: “So much happened so quickly.”
At the time, Bohanna was going through a divorce while working her day job. She’d then go home, take care of her daughters and create wreaths. “In those moments, I realized there was nothing I couldn’t do,” Bohanna says.
A year later, she made Design Fetish her full-time job, and a year after that, she secured a designated workspace in Mainframe Studios. She now has a three-person team that helps with outdoor planters. Her offerings also include floral centerpieces, wreaths and corporate decor.
Having her own business has provided Bohanna with the flexibility to get involved in the community. She’s a member of the Ankeny school board and leads classes and workshops for Youth Emergency Services and Shelter of Iowa as well as the After School Arts Program.
Bringing her creative vision to life is a process, Bohanna says, and while she could tinker with each order for days on end, she’s developed an intuition as to when the project has reached the finish line.
“I like to flow with the processes and freestyle with an idea from my head using my balance of color and style,” she says. “It’s kind of like a crossword puzzle, working my way through it. If I have a wreath, I usually work on it close to when it’s due because I’ll keep overworking it. At a certain point, I feel like I’ve arrived.”
See Bohanna’s latest offerings and place an order at bydeshara.com.
