THE DESIGN COLLECTIVE TURNS RETAIL INTO THEATRE WITH ITS SECOND COLOMBO STORE.
Binu Wickremasinghe
Nine years after The Design Collective first opened its doors, the Colombo fashion destination is entering a new chapter. Its second store, located at Seed Café, arrives not simply as an expansion, but as a confident expression of what the collective has become: colourful, curious, collaborative and increasingly interested in the experience that surrounds fashion. The new space is conceived as somewhere to wander, discover and perhaps be surprised. Inspired by the visual language of the circus, it brings together bold graphic elements, rich textures, playful contrasts and unexpected details, creating a setting with its own distinctive personality. It is an appropriate direction for a retailer whose identity has always been tied to discovery.
Founded by Shahili Gomes and Binu Wickramasinghe, The Design Collective has spent the past nine years creating a platform for contemporary fashion and lifestyle, bringing established designers into conversation with emerging creative voices. The opening at Seed Café feels like both a celebration of that history and a statement about where the founders want to go next. For Shahili and Binu, the starting point for the new store was an unlikely source of retail inspiration: the circus. Not the circus as nostalgia or spectacle for its own sake, but its visual vocabulary. Scale. Movement. Strong lines. Colour. Theatre. There is something inherently magnetic about that world, a sense that anything might appear around the next corner. Translated into a fashion space, those ideas offered the founders an opportunity to create an environment that could be playful without becoming frivolous and expressive without overwhelming the clothes and objects within it.
“We started with the idea of the circus, the bold lines, the energy and the sense of theatre,” says Shahili. “We wanted to take those elements and translate them into a space that felt unexpected, playful and full of character.” That word, unexpected, seems particularly important. At a time when retail can so easily become predictable, with familiar layouts and increasingly similar visual languages, The Design Collective is making a case for personality. The Seed Café store is deliberately expressive. Graphic forms, texture and contrast create a backdrop that is eclectic yet considered, playful yet sophisticated. The intention is not merely to display fashion efficiently. It is to give the act of browsing a sense of occasion.
For Binu, that emotional dimension was central to the concept. “We didn’t want to create just another store. We wanted people to feel something when they walk in, a sense of discovery, curiosity and fun. The space is really an expression of where The Design Collective is today, nine years into our journey.” It is an idea that speaks to a wider shift in the meaning of physical retail. A store today has to offer something a screen cannot. It can invite people to linger. It can create atmosphere. It can introduce one designer beside another and allow unexpected connections to emerge. Most importantly, it can turn shopping into an encounter with ideas, materials and creative personalities. That philosophy has been embedded in The Design Collective from its earliest days.
At the centre of the new store is the collective’s signature curation of fashion and lifestyle brands. Established names sit alongside newer creative voices, continuing an approach that has allowed the business to function as more than a conventional retailer. Its role has also been that of connector, curator and platform.
Some of the names inside the new space carry particular significance. Nimanse and House of Lonali have been part of The Design Collective since its inception nine years ago. Their presence at Seed Café gives the opening a pleasing sense of continuity. As the collective expands, designers who were there at the beginning remain part of its story. That longevity says something about the relationships behind the racks.
Fashion retail is often described through seasons, arrivals and the relentless pursuit of what comes next. The Design Collective’s story offers another perspective. Here, progress can also mean growing alongside designers, maintaining creative relationships and giving brands room to evolve. The result is a retail identity built as much around community and collaboration as commerce. For Sri Lankan design, such spaces matter.
A strong creative culture needs designers, certainly, but it also needs places where their work can be encountered. It needs curators who can place different aesthetics together, audiences willing to discover unfamiliar names and physical spaces capable of giving individual brands context. The Design Collective has positioned itself within that ecosystem by championing established and emerging designers while creating a platform for individuality and creative expression.
The second store therefore represents more than additional square footage. It is a milestone in a relationship between The Design Collective, its designers and the people who have followed it over nine years. There is also something fitting about marking that milestone with a store inspired by theatre. Fashion itself has always contained an element of performance. Clothes can change posture, mood and perception. They can be deeply personal while simultaneously communicating something to the world. A retail environment that embraces colour, scale and visual drama acknowledges that fashion is not simply about objects. It is about the feeling those objects create. The Seed Café space appears designed around precisely that instinct.
Rather than retreating into neutrality, it chooses character. Rather than allowing the store to disappear behind its merchandise, it makes the environment part of the conversation. Bold graphics and rich textures provide a distinctive setting for the designers within, while playful contrasts echo the eclectic nature of The Design Collective itself. Yet the most interesting aspect of the opening may be the balance between continuity and change.
Nine years is long enough for a fashion business to accumulate history, relationships and a recognisable point of view. It is also a moment when familiarity can become a constraint. The second store allows The Design Collective to retain what has defined it while giving itself permission to experiment. The designers who have grown alongside the collective remain present. The commitment to curation remains. The emphasis on Sri Lankan creativity remains. What changes is the stage. And perhaps that is why the circus reference works so well. A circus is a collection of distinct talents gathered under one idea, each bringing something different to the experience. There is spectacle, but there is also craft. There is individuality, but it exists within an ensemble. In that sense, the inspiration feels unexpectedly close to the philosophy of The Design Collective itself. The opening also suggests confidence in the enduring appeal of the physical store. Digital convenience may have transformed how people shop, but it has not eliminated the desire to encounter beautiful things in interesting surroundings. If anything, it has raised expectations. A compelling store now has to provide a reason to enter, explore and remember it afterwards. The Design Collective is betting on discovery as that reason.
Shahili Gomes
Its new Colombo location is not presented as a reinvention of everything that came before. Instead, it feels like an amplification of the qualities that have shaped the collective over nine years: curiosity, individuality, relationships and a willingness to give creative voices a platform. There is something refreshingly optimistic about that proposition. The second store celebrates growth without abandoning intimacy, and theatricality without losing sight of the designers at its heart. It asks visitors not simply to shop, but to look around, encounter something unfamiliar and enjoy the pleasure of finding it. Nine years after its beginning, The Design Collective is opening another door. What lies beyond it is not merely another retail space, but a colourful new stage for the next act of Sri Lankan fashion and design.
