Friday 31 May 2013

artista del mes: nadia albertini

The end of May commemorates one year since this blog published its first post. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate this very special occasion than by introducing Nadia Albertini.
Nadia's mom is one if my dearest, oldest friends (a gifted book artist and special art projects director), which means I met Nadia when she was just an adorable little girl, along with her just as adorable baby sister.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and you will find Nadia as one of the top representatives of the next generation of extremely talented textile/fibre artists. And that just makes me deliriously happy. For someone so young, she has had an impressive trajectory, everyday adding magnificent pieces to her already awe-inspiring portfolio. She has worked in unbelievable projects for many design houses and designers in the couture industry world wide, while continuing to keep an extremely grounded, hard working, professional and generous work ethic.
©Nadia Albertini.

IN HER OWN WORDS: AN INTERVIEW
Ana: WHAT LEAD YOU TO A CAREER IN TEXTILES AND FASHION?
Nadia: I was born in Mexico City in a family where art and design are very important. My parents had a book-binding atelier, so I always saw them making things with their hands. I think seeing my grandmother doing embroidery was also very inspiring, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time. As a kid, I could spend hours drawing, painting. I enjoyed silk painting too but I never thought about studying textiles or fashion. That world was very far from ours. It all really started when I was 15, when I participated in the International Swarovski Elements Accessories Design Competition. We were to use their materials to embellish a fashion accessory. I remember I could have all the stones and beads and rhinestones I wanted for my project. I fell in love with their shine. After graduating from high school I moved to Paris to study textiles and fashion at the Duperré School of Applied Arts. I didn’t know what I wanted to do exactly but then, I had my first internship at Chloé. And they needed help in the embroidery department. So I helped with the making of samples, hand embroidery swatches, fabric manipulations. It was a mix of a lot of techniques, some of which I learned from my grandmother. We had the chance to work with different materials from the best suppliers.  After two months there, I knew I wanted to be an embroidery designer.
©Nadia Albertini. Detail.
Ana: WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR INSPIRATION FROM? DO YOU FOLLOW A DESIGN PROCESS?
Nadia: The inspiration really depends on who I’m working for. But the design process is similar from one brand to the other. I usually discuss the main inspiration with the head designer or creative director. They give me their main inputs, like “China” or “mosaic” or “Versace from the 80’s” or “Marie Laurencin colors”. Inspirations are complex and very different from one season to the other. Then, once I have this guideline, I do my own research. I can spend days in the library, it’s probably one of my favorite parts of the job. Sometimes you are looking for a certain type of image and it happens that you find something else, completely opposite. But then it works! We must always be open to new things.  I often go to London for the day to do research at the Central Saint Martins Library or at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I come back with about 600 images that I submit to the studio. Then we build “the stories”, the main ideas that we would like to develop in the shape of swatches for the season.
This part is nice too, but it’s much more technical and you have to be very focused. You have to be able to imagine a sample in advance so to know what to ask from the embroidery ateliers we work with. Most of the time, I make small samples for them to follow. I like making things myself, especially when it’s a subtle combination of materials.
©Nadia Albertini.

Ana: DURING THE DESIGN PROCESS (THOUGH YOU ALREADY MENTIONED IT IS CLIENT SPECIFIC), IS THERE A SUGGESTION OF YOUR MULTICULTURAL BACKGROUND IN THE WORK YOU PRODUCE?
Nadia: There is, yes. My sister and I were always educated in both languages and both cultures, which gave us a very rich base for everything we do. I think being French/Mexican and having been raised in Mexico City surrounded by so much color and patterns trained my eye from a very young age. I remember wearing all sorts of embroidered and hand woven huipiles when I was a kid. We used to make trips to the countryside very often, especially to Oaxaca, to discover the most amazing places and crafts. I think we had a very free and inspiring childhood in Mexico, I don't think it would have been the same had we lived in Paris from a young age. Also, Mexican people do think outside the box. If we don't know how to make something, we try different things, we experiment, we explore possibilities, some of them quite surprising and unexpected. It is what my mom calls the "ingenio mexicano". It's a very instinctive, intuitive way of doing things and I hope to have a hint of that in my work.
©Nadia Albertini.

Ana: WHAT IS IT THAT YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT YOUR CURRENT WORK?
Nadia: I love to be able to collaborate with very different brands and designers who have very different personalities, especially since I never imagined having the chance to work in this field.
I like every single part of the job, from the research, to the development, the sketching, the stressful days before the shows, the last minute changes before the dress goes on the runway.
I’ve had the chance to meet and work with very talented and inspiring people, either in Paris, London, New York or Mumbai. That’s what I like the most. 
©Nadia Albertini.

Ana: ARE THERE ANY MATERIALS THAT YOU TEND TO RESPOND MORE KEENLY TO?
Nadia: Embroidery allows us to use any sort of materials. For Balmain, for example, I designed embroideries made entirely of raffia. Not exactly the easiest material but it was very exciting. I like to transform a regular material so that people ask themselves: what is that dress made of? It goes from pleated tulle, hammered cora springs (a material often used in traditional Indian saris), folded and burnt sequins. I like the fact that embroidery offers endless possibilities.
©Nadia Albertini.

Ana: WHAT CLASS ARE YOU CURRENTLY TEACHING IN LONDON?
Nadia: Two to three times a year, I go to London to teach the short course named ‘Couture Embellishment’ at the London College of Fashion. It’s a small group, about 13 to 15 students, I like to give individual time and attention to each of them. They learn to dye their own fabrics and threads, traditional embroidery stitches but also fabric manipulations and 3D embroidery with sequins and beads. During that week, they also learn the embroidery design process: selecting inspiration images, building a mood board. They create their own design and learn how to transfer it to the fabric and how to use a professional embroidery frame. 
©Nadia Albertini.

Ana: YOU TRAVEL OFTEN TO INDIA, WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE WHILE WORKING THERE?
Nadia: I love going to India. Every project and every team is different and I learn new things every day. Funny, when you know I don’t speak hindi and most of the people I work with don’t speak English.
I have a fond memory about the first time I worked directly with the karigars (the embroidery workers). In France, only women do embroidery.  There, it’s the opposite, only men do. I was trying to explain to them how to do a special technique but I could not find the words. So I took thread and needle, sat down in front of the frame and then… 60 people stopped working to look at me. It scared me a little bit, I thought they did not approve of that. But it wasn’t that, they were just amused and curious.
©Nadia Albertini. Detail.
Ana: HOW IS PARIS INFLUENCING YOUR WORK?
Nadia: Paris is a great source of inspiration. The city itself is beautiful and the architecture and ornamentation is magnificent. We have some really good libraries, like Bibliothèque Forney or the library at Musée Galliera. But there are also all the exhibits, the art galleries, the annual fairs and the new design shops.
Paris has a lot to offer in terms of fabrics and material suppliers because of its history and relationship to the fashion and textile industries. The Ateliers des Métiers d’Art, with whom I have the chance to work very often have been open for more than a hundred years. Some of them are still managed by the founding families who are passionate about their art. They have incredible archives and have mastered the most amazing techniques such as Lunéville and Cornelly embroidery, fabric dyeing, mechanical pleating, feather work, artificial flowers, etc…It’s a privilege to work with them and they only exist in Paris. 
©Nadia Albertini

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Sunday 12 May 2013

food inspired

Good food provides not only nourishment, but if allowed, it also regales us with great sources of inspiration, including of course striking colour palettes.
Here are three examples:

BAJA FISH TACO
Queen West Street houses many of our favourite haunts in Toronto. Here you can find excellent shopping, entertaining and most certainly, food! Grand Electric is the perfect example of the latter. I'm not sure what the story behind the restaurant is, but it has (along with Maizal) the best Mexican food in town. With an eclectic ambiance, and somewhat loud music, they offer a most delicious fish taco (their key lime dessert is simply spellbinding). When my order of tacos arrived the first time we visited, I found them so quaint that my immediate reaction was to take a picture. E looked at me suspiciously since I hardly ever take pictures of food as in my opinion, food tends to photograph unfavourably.
Grand Electric has a section on one of its walls decorated with some Lucha Libre paraphernalia, which I thought would tie-in very well with the Grobet post. The tacos image depict, on the left, a chicken taco, on the right, a fish taco.

LW'S SALAD
One of the advantages of working in a very creative environment, is being surrounded by very creative people who effortlessly make art out of any medium at hand. This image showcases LW's lunch salad. She was giving the final touches to it when I happened to walk by and see it. I stopped on my tracks and commented on the beauty of it, a few seconds later, I was documenting it for posterity. It was perfectly composed, all elements in harmonious balance.

SUNDAY PANCAKES
Though not exclusively, Sunday seems to be the preferred day of the week for pancakes (always made from scratch). We all tend to eat them very differently: E likes them with just a bit of butter. F enjoys them with the superb maple syrup we have been treating ourselves to since living in Toronto (culinarium sells the best in town, seriously). I'm keen on sprinkling them with powder sugar and lots of strawberries.

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After cutting the strawberries this is what I'm always left with: An intriguing  possibility of motifs in the form of strawberry tops arranged in the semblance of a design unit. Today I decided to run with it, here is the resulting design process:
Strawberry tops on cutting board.
With the aid of Photoshop, the strawberry tops exist now without the background and are ready to be put in repeat. A straight repeat moved things along expeditiously during this initial process--I gave myself 10 minutes to resolve the rapport.
This was a very quick, fun, repeat exercise, all with the aid of Photoshop.

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The next steps consider the motifs themselves, the goal being to push the concept further to fully re-contextualize the design. Some Photoshop filters were used. It is important to disclose that I am not a fan of using filters (in my view, most images altered with filters tend to have a  somewhat  "photoshopy/filtery/ready-made" look), however, in certain instances, they can be convenient sketching tools.
In order to bring the content of this post full circle, the 3 food palettes were brought into play as the platform to generate 3 colourways out of the basic design, which is this one:
Strawberry Tops. ©Ana Galindo for Inkfibre
E pointed out a very under-the-microscope look which granted a fresh start to a design that still had a long way to go. Needless to say, the results were quite unexpected mostly considering they were worked under a very tight (self imposed) time restriction.
Palette: Baja Fish Taco. Design: Strawberry Tops. ©Ana Galindo for Inkfibre.
Palette: LW's Salad. Design: Strawberry Tops. ©Ana Galindo for Inkfibre.
Palette: Sunday Pancakes. Design: Strawberry Tops. ©Ana Galindo for Inkfibre.
The dynamism foisted during this task was very enjoyable and reminiscent of my university years when we worked on "repentinas", meaning a "mini/micro charrette", in this case with no collaborative element.

Last notes on the exercise: End-use and scale need to be determined (I see the repeat at least 15") and I would like to try it as a half-drop repeat (though as a full-drop is working well). If it were to be screenprinted, it would be in at least 3 colours, resolving the films by hand.