In yesterday's post we briefly looked at a few fashion designers who opted out of the industry to pursue other careers. Let’s continue the thread by looking at the work of Natalia Brilli.
Some readers may remember that Brilli founded her own fashion label and started producing her collections over 20 years ago.
Included in the volume 100 New Fashion Designers (Laurence King, 2009) by Hywel Davies, Brilli soon expanded her interests, working as a set designer for the theatre and the cinema.
Then, moving between Brussels and Paris, she started focusing on interior design, creating furniture, ceramics, recycled leather pieces, raffia objects and wall tapestries representing underwater landscapes.
While working in the fashion industry, Brilli had developed a passion for quality and craftsmanship that she has now transferred to her objects, such as her oversized recycled velvet chains and her wooden tripod stools, fully upholstered with recycled leather and inspired by a marine creature, the octopus.
Her ceramic pieces are made in Belgium, like the furniture, produced in collaboration with Belgian cabinet makers.
In some of her pieces - the raffia tapestries and raffia and shell masks - and in particular in the main materials of choice and the techniques developed to make them, there are still some connections with fashion.
The objects are made in collaboration with a family workshop in Madagascar and incorporate shells covered in leather from the dormant stocks of French and Italian luxury tanneries.
Brilli's grotesque, fun and at times disquieting masks point at surrealist art and symbolic influences. The designer is at times inspired by artist André Masson and by his early surrealist experiments, but also by his works exploring chance effects, such as sand paintings, as well as paintings of metamorphoses of animal and human forms and abstract works with shells such as "Souvenir de Long Island".
Brilli's masks are are conceived as hybrids between crafts, sculptures and installations or as talismans you may find in a cabinet of curiosities and will probably evoke in art fans visions of Arcimboldo.
Yet, rather than the 1500s Italian painter, the masks are modern interpretations of the illustrations included in the volume Ricreatione dell'occhio e della mente (Recreation of the mind and eyes,1681; published in Latin as Recreatio mentis et oculi in 1864 - Download Recreatio mentis et oculi_FilippoBuonanni) by Italian naturalist Filippo Buonanni.
The volume is actually a scientific text about seashells and it was also one of the first manuals that, rather than focusing on shell collections as a hobby, was conceived as an early research of conchology.
Yet, maybe to entertain the readers, Buonanni included at the end of the book "portraits" made from assorted shells.
Rather than moving from Arcimboldo, the illustrator of the book, Italian painter and engraver Giovanni Francesco Venturini, tried to copy shell arrangements seen in the drawers of specimen cabinets and used them to reflect contemporary taste among collectors.
Brilli's pieces (expect some of them to be co-opted back into fashion and reappear maybe as runway installations at some point) are currently part of the "Belgium is Design" showcase (Hall 6, Stand J82 - K81, Parc des expositions - Paris Nord Villepinte), at the Parisian international trade fair for home collections Maison&Objet (till 23rd January), this year revolving around the themes of caring and commitment.
Entitled "Take care!", this edition of Maison&Objet is inspired by a reflection about the changes in creating, manufacturing and consuming introduced in the last few years by major health, ecological and human issues.
Artists and designers invited are presenting their solutions to the problems of the planet and products that promote positive societal and environmental evolutions.
The trade fair also explores the humanisation of the notion of innovation and the adoption of new modes of consumption to reinvent people's lifestyles through designs that act as social bonding agents and that explore the possibilities of a variety of materials to encourage users to take care of themselves and the planet while contributing to the preservation of know-how and heritage.
All images in this post courtesy of Natalia Brilli / Belgium Is Design.
Natalia Brilli portrait (first image in this post) courtesy and copyright Laeticia Bica.
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