Nathalie Chaize
A women like no other

People meeting Nathalie Chaize in person for the first time are just amazed by how well the brand carries her name.

Her art developed from an early age, fired by family adventures. Morocco, Zaire, all of Africa and then later on Asia and Cuba all played their part in sharpening her vision and intuitive approach to shapes, and building up a unique relationship with colour, light and the female form. Past fragrances continue to haunt even her most modern creations.

Then came another encounter, architecture with a capital A, and the logic of construction: delicate, but unfailingly effective.

Today as always, support is the key; the garment has to support femininity and work effectively for the body. It's all a question of careful balance and clever assembly, with tension, lines of strength, choice of materials. The cut and the shape have to be dosed. No extras, no overload. No excess.

Sleekness verging on minimalism. Where the uninitiated may see only discretion, the brand's fans recognise a unique asceticism - or maybe mysticism - that speaks to their hearts.

Four years of architectural studies made a lasting impression, defining Nathalie Chaize's approach to and understanding of her profession: assembling fizz and the chaos of the imagination with a need to knock the stuffing out of functionality. That's her way of thinking and her way of doing. It's what Nathalie wanted to do even before she became Nathalie Chaize.

Doing, undoing. Something else from childhood; undoing to understand how things are made. How to make them up again differently. In her own way. Breaking new ground. A garment is a whole. It's a construction. The discrete and aerial presence of a lady who is modest herself and respectful of others, but who always follows through her thoughts and feelings.

She has her own ways and means; her style; her thought processes; an inner search that may take time but is never cumbersome, always reaching towards life and sensitivity.

She's a one-off, this fashion designer who feels as comfortable in Lyon as in Paris, in the fashion world as in the painting world, as part of a clan or as a solo artist. As indefinable as predictable.

Her style consists in avoiding the 'neither here nor there', in defining a point of equilibrium. Without fighting shy of extremes. The break point guides the eye away from normality and conventions. The Nathalie Chaize woman is an anti-model. Chic and sexy, gentle and pro-active, conventional and unpredictable. Or serene in self-abandonment. She incarnates the delicate and secret moment of acquiescence. The point of equilibrium and of wavering that is the very essence of her work. and possibly of her life.

Original text by Thomas Masson