With her slicked-back hair and defined brows, former representative and senator, and now educator, Anna Dominique “Nikki” Coseteng has her signature look down pat. It’s one she has maintained through the years regardless of the shifting tides of fashion.

She instinctively knows what looks good on her.

On the day we interviewed her, she was in a blue shift with a plaid design. She had draped on her bodice a sheer printed scarf, while around her neck was a beaded neckpiece in the same shade of blue as the dress.

Coseteng had designed the necklace using beads she had been collecting for decades. It was only one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, she and her long-time collaborator Recy Tumbaga have made in the past 25 years.

“Even before she became a congresswoman, we were already making necklaces,” Tumbaga said.

Creative process

Their creative process has remained unchanged through the years.

On a long table in Tumbaga’s home, Coseteng’s collection of beads is strewn. The two then begin the time-consuming task of sorting them out based mainly on color.

“Binubuhos lang namin sa lamesa,” Tumbaga said. There are beads made of porcelain, clay, glass, jade, carnelian, agate, lapis lazuli, turquoise, shell, malachite, rubies, sapphires, pearls, bone and horn.

Coseteng buys the beads herself “wherever and whenever” she travels. It could be a market stall in northern Luzon or in Africa, Bolivia, China and Indonesia.

She doesn’t willfully seek them out, she said. In a market or boutique, if she sees a handful of beads that catch her eye, she buys them. She said she rarely finds a full string of beads; usually they’ve been dismantled and are sold by the piece.

“In Africa, one seller boasted that his beads were from the Congo. I just took his word for it. I didn’t have time to verify his claim. I won’t go all the way to Chad or Cameroon or Mali,” Coseteng said. “As long as I like something, I will buy it… whether it’s P20 or P20,000.”

Some of the elements used might be considered batty, like the gunmetal hippopotamus heads that started out as fridge magnets, or the blue circular chopstick rests she found in a Japanese surplus store.

Arduous process

Once she and Tumbaga have set aside enough beads and elements to make a necklace, they lay them out on the table, imagining which would go where. It’s not just the beads, however, that they lay out. They also factor in the brass or silver “connectors” to be used between each bead.

“We don’t just use one connector. We incorporate tiny silver or brass caps to cover the holes of each bead. If you look closely, there are actually three connectors in between each bead,” Coseteng said.

It’s an arduous process, and—take note—Tumbaga still hasn’t strung the beads together yet. The fitting of the finished product is an altogether different process that can take anywhere from three to five meetings with Coseteng.

“I really have to try each and every necklace on to make sure that it falls properly,” Coseteng said. If she finds it too short, too long, too tight or too clunky, Tumbaga has to cut the cords and restring the beads.

“Getting the fit of a necklace right takes longer than the fitting of a gown,” Tumbaga said. “We argue a lot but she really has an eye for color.”

Only when she’s completely satisfied will Coseteng wear the necklace in public. It’s safe to say she knows what she wants, and is patient enough to wait for things to come together.

Different shades

“My necklaces have beads that I bought five, 10, 15 years ago. If I don’t have enough beads in the correct shade, I just store them first.”

She then proceeded to make five tiny mounds of yellow beads, pointing out that while they were all yellow, they were in five totally different shades that would not work with one another. It reminded us of that scene in “The Devil Wears Prada” where fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep) schools Andy (Anne Hathaway) on how the latter’s lumpy blue sweater was actually cerulean.

Even before she turned 20, Coseteng was already the curator and owner of her own boutique, Galerie Dominique. She ran it for more than 10 years. But her interest in collecting beautiful things goes back much earlier than that, back to her teen years.

“I started collecting in high school. I would choose from the necklaces sold by the Cordillera folk. They would come down to sell their beads so they could pay for their children’s tuition.”

She would buy a few pieces here and there using her weekly allowance but she always chose those that caught her fancy. This was really how she first honed her eye for beauty.

“People keep asking me to sell my necklaces and I just keep saying OK, but it hasn’t happened yet because I don’t know how. Even if somebody with $1 million came and offered to buy three dozen of this or three dozen of that, I wouldn’t be able to produce, because they’re all one of a kind.”