Design Hero: Natalie Chanin
On an intense business trip to Chicago, I stumbled on a designer that would influence not only my design sense but my mindset for decades. Her thoughts on slow fashion, the value of craft and sustainability were foundational to the experiments that eventually resulted in The Green Goat Project.
I’d had a long, depleting day of meetings, sonI escaped into the iconic Barney’s department store for a much needed dose of joy. Barney’s was unique — very well-curated, elevated and creatively inspiring. Catering to an affluent and culturally curious clientele, it was the perfect place for me to soak up style even if the price tags were above my budget at the time. Both the escalators and prices rose as you ascended floors, and they championed progressive, unique designers.
I’ll never forget seeing that Project Alabama jacket: it was constructed from layers of printed t-shirts, appliqued, stenciled, embroidered almost like graffiti, but also in a pattern. It was elegant but it also had the comfortable, friendly quality of a quilt. It was precious, yet made from common discards. Something a rock star would wear, and something I instantly wanted to learn to make. So I went home and did my online research, discovering Natalie Chanin —- the creative genius behind the work. There wasn’t a lot of info out there about their technique or philosophy. I tucked it all away in my mind as I got sucked into my job and day-to-day demands. But I never forgot her name.
Eventually, I found her online sewing course teaching the techniques used by her studio, Alabama Chanin. I dove in. I’d been doing needle crafts since I was a child. My mother taught my sisters and I to make clothes, curtains, cushions, quilts… anything we were curious in was learnable. I gravitated to embroidery and creating my own surface designs, so Natalie’s approach was a great way for me to inject my traditional skills with a new, modern sensibility. Overtime, I designed some of my own surface patterns and color palettes for my own wardrobe. Drawing inspiration from each book she wrote, I embraced not only details about her story, process and materials but also her philosophies on sustainability and Slow Fashion.
The underpinning of the studio is inextricably tied to her home town of Florence, Alabama, a former giant in the American textile industry that had fallen on hard times. She established a full studio, hired local quilters, and built a thriving business that creates high-value, high-quality garments. She also opened a school that teaches her beautiful techniques and sustainable clothing philosophy to students around the world. Her work sustains more than the planet — it sustains her local community by bringing tangible work and income. For the lucky people who have discovered Alabama Chanin School of Making, it sustains the creative spirit of thousands of home sewers and contributes to an increased sense of value in their needlecraft work.
Natalie Chanin’s story made me think about my own clothing choices. It challenged me as a designer and as a concerned citizen from a region reinventing itself. She gave me courage to try techniques that may fail, to experiment with colors and textures. The beauty of her work opened my eyes to the ideals of elevated recycling. She inspired me to reach beyond the predictable design of haphazardly combining pieces of wool to create a crazy quilt, to use my design skills to create something beautiful from discards.
Her evolving design work, her story, philosophy and values continue to inspire me and I am so grateful that she shares so open-heartedly.
#nataliechanin #designhero