Molly de St. Andre and her husband Aurélien own the retail clothing and home décor shop Bon Dimanche, on Railroad Street in Great Barrington, where they also feature jewelry and artwork by local artists. The fun, bright, and bold cacti, pasta shapes, dogs and pineapple designs from Molly and Aurel’s Petit Pilou clothing line have become a staple feature of South County fashion for babies, kids, and adults as well. The day I visited the shop/studio, on a quiet Tuesday in January, Molly, ever the restless creator, had just finished making a pair of ’80s-era flowery pajamas at her daughter’s request.
Our conversation has been edited for clarity and concision.
SHEELA CLARY
Where were you born?
MOLLY DE ST. ANDRE
I grew up in Belmont, Mass., and went to Simon’s Rock when I was 16. I had a connection there as I’d grown up going to this wonderful arts camp in New Hampshire called Interlocken, and the wonderful provost of Simon’s rock, Ba Win, who passed away recently, was integral in starting Interlocken. When I was disgruntled with high school, he told me about Simon’s Rock. I really loved it. I got my associate of arts degree and then transferred to Bennington, got my bachelor’s in ceramics and printmaking, then a master’s in teaching.
One of my best friends growing up was deaf, so I was fluent in sign language, and I worked in Deaf Ed for many years. When I left, I was still connected to Great Barrington, as I’d worked at Bizen and Tom’s Toys, and Alana Chernila was a friend. I went back and forth, staying with her, and traveling in Turkey and Afghanistan.
CLARY
What were you doing in Turkey and Afghanistan?
DE ST. ANDRE
My ex-boyfriend was Afghan but had grown up in Santa Fe, where I was teaching at the School for the Deaf. He was the head of a human rights organization in Kabul, and I started working for an arts school called Turquoise Mountain Foundation. This was 2006 to 2008, so the Taliban was out. It was an incredible time to be there. Turquoise Mountain was a vocational school to teach the traditional arts of Afghanistan. It was funded by Prince Charles. When I started there were like six expats and a handful of Afghans. It’s huge now.
I knew a lot about ceramics chemistry, so the work was very technical in the beginning, but because I had a background in education, I became the director of curriculum. I worked with different art schools, documenting what they were teaching. They were trying to elevate Afghan crafts to a level to be sold on a world market, similar to India.
CLARY
Like Ten Thousand Villages?
DE ST. ANDRE
Exactly. We were working with ceramics, calligraphy, and woodworking, but it’s grown now to jewelry making and other art forms.
CLARY
Did you work with girls?
DE ST. ANDRE
It worked with girls for many years. The father, the master artisan, would only teach his firstborn son the art, so these art forms were dying out because of this cultural tradition, this coveted skill. The organization was working with these masters, trying to open their minds and say, ‘These traditions are gonna die. We have to teach them to women, too.’ It was a big deal, what we were doing.
I left in 2008, when there were a series of bombings targeting expats. I ended up working with a Turkish organization that was starting a school for the deaf. I’d met Aurel in Afghanistan, so he joined me in Turkey. We lived in Istanbul, then moved back to the Berkshires.
We got married here, and then we geared up to leave again for a crazy, fun project. In Kabul, Aurel had found a 1966 Volkswagen bus that he was in love with, so we devised a project where we’d drive from Afghanistan to France—where he’s from—to get the bus home. He’d learned how to use this amazing camera in Afghanistan, so we took portraits of people in the countries and ended up having a couple of really nice shows. We got Volkswagen to sponsor us. They sent parts for the bus.
The Volkswagen couldn’t be driven on the roads in Jalalabad and other parts of Afghanistan that were really dangerous, so they loaded it onto the top of a giant coach bus from like the ’70s. This is the way they moved cars through the most dangerous places. Because he’s French, my husband got a visa to drive through Iran. But I couldn’t get a visa, so I flew from Kabul to the eastern part of Turkey. We went through Afghanistan, Turkey, Greece, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Italy, and France.
In 2009, [real estate prices] tanked, and I knew that they were going to be the lowest they’d ever be and eventually that I wanted to come back here, so I ended up buying a house here in Great Barrington while we were in Turkey. Aurel really liked it here, and my mom had moved out from Boston to the Berkshires, and we knew we were going to have kids.
CLARY
Where are the kids in school?
DE ST. ANDRE
They go to Montessori. They’ve been there all the way through, except when we moved to Réunion, in 2021, in COVID. We went the first time for a year, and then again for half a year.
CLARY
What connection did you have to Réunion?
DE ST. ANDRE
We really wanted the kids to have an experience going to school in French. We’d spent a lot of time looking in France but didn’t find a place. I think we’re a bit spoiled being here. We wanted to be in a place like this. But it was either we’re going to be in a city, or we weren’t going to be in France. Aurel had gone to Réunion to take a first job there. He had always talked about it.
CLARY
Where is Réunion?
DE ST. ANDRE
It’s off the coast of Madagascar.
It’s like the French Hawaii, with free public school and healthcare. There are people from all over the world. Réunion was great, but the French government doesn’t favor small business the way the American government does. We had to get back to work.
CLARY
When did you start the business?
DE ST. ANDRE
Right after we moved here. It was called Moho Designs. My husband did a lot of graphic design for local businesses, like the branding for Fuel.
CLARY
Like that cool moss sign on the wall. How many times has he redone it?
DE ST. ANDRE
I think Aurel has redone that five or six times.
Apart from graphic design, we were designing original posters. We put out our first Berkshire poster around 2012 and sold it in the gym of the old middle school, at the Berkshire Grown Holiday Market. It was the ‘Winter Over’ poster, and we sold like 25. A big success. By the end of the year, we’d sold out of all 100 of them. We’ve created this model with our seasonal posters where we handprint a limited edition, either 100 or 200, and then once we sell those out, we never print them again. We save number one, two, and three for our kids.
We also make a smaller version that’s either an offset print or an archival Epson print, signed. We use the images as postcards. People really love those images.
To see that people would actually buy things… it was amazing to me.
Then, when our son was born, I was doing a lot of paper cutting. The pineapple, the cactus, the pasta, some of our other original patterns were all done in this style. I started making clothes for him. I had the baby right there, and I could make half a pair of pants and try them on him and see if they worked. People would stop me in the street and would be like, ‘Where did you get that?’ I was just having fun and felt creative and wanted to make things for my baby.
I was like, ‘This is something that we could do on a bigger scale.’ The pants became iconic to our brand. We started designing patterns and trying to print them on screens in our little studio in our house. We didn’t know what we were doing.
I ended up meeting people interested in trading. I silkscreened for them, and they taught me how to grade a pattern, which means creating the sizes. It sold like crazy. We realized people love the way things look in miniature. They love buying things for their grandchildren.
Then we met Kathleen Tillett, who had T4 Fabrics that everyone knew as Tillet Textiles, in Sheffield. Kathleen saw that we were printing fabric and she was like, ‘Where are you doing this?’
I said, ‘In our tiny studio in our house.’
She said, ‘You have to come to Sheffield.’
She taught us how to print on these giant tables. For years we worked there at night when the factory was not going. It took eight to 12 hours to do three tables of fabric. We’d bring the play pen and a movie projector. We’d put the kids to sleep, and we’d work all night long.
CLARY
What’s the age through which you can fit?
DE ST. ANDRE
We go up to 10 years. But people begged for adult things, so we do pants and sweatshirts in adult sizes.
We do zero advertising. Our marketing budget is being out at the farmers’ market. It’s almost half of the retail business, which is why I don’t see in the foreseeable speech that we’d ever stop. It’s a different mentality when things are there for a certain amount of time. There’s an energy to it.
CLARY
How does it feel to know that something from your creative mind is out in the world?
DE ST. ANDRE
Lovely. There’s no bigger compliment than like a five-year-old being like, ‘I want that so badly,’ or ‘Can I spend my own money on that?’
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Watch a video of Molly and Aurélien de St. André’s silkscreening process here.
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