Natalia Brilli – Belgian fashion designer based in Paris | Modem Mag

Natalia Brilli was born in Belgium and now works in Paris where she settled her design studio.

After graduating from the prestigious Ecole de La Cambre in Brussels, she leads, besides fashion, a career in set and costume design for theater. She joins the IFM school in 2003 and focuses, after various collaborations with established designers, on what she likes best : designing accessories.

Success is here the following year, when she launches her first collection immediately spotted by high-end shops such as Maria Luisa, Browns or Barneys. This makes 2004 a key year for her, since she also joins Rochas’ designing studio as an accessories stylist alongside Olivier Theyskens who was designing the prêt-à-porter line at that time. Her own work keeps getting more and more respect and she is awarded the A.N.D.A.M. prize in 2006 and has since then collaborated with renowned leather goods houses, the latest being the acclaimed Belgian house Delvaux.

Ever since her first collection, Natalia Brilli has imposed a unique style, with her oversize beads necklaces or he cameos encased with the finest leathers, those very used by glove makers. Her women’s and unisex jewelry lines expropriate the codes of classic jewelry by bringing them a new ethereal simplicity or by playing with monochrome and surface effects in a very light way.

Natalia Brilli has extended her unique technique to all the fields associated with accessories : jewelry, bags, leather goods. She is now developing a more artistic line of objects, far from functional restraints.

Hence the « Rockband » installation, initially made for the windows of boutique Maria Luisa in Paris. Constituted of human skeletons and real music instruments all covered in leather to every single detail, this installation has quickly raised interest and been shown during exhibitions all over the world, as for instance at the celebrated Art Basel Miami fair or even in Australia. A real work of art, it is also the demonstration of an exceptional know how. And Natalia Brilli, who often cites Vanities of the XVIIth Century or the Victorian era style, as references didn’t stop here. Her cultivated elegance and visual spectrum can now be found in her new series of animal skulls. Transcending the déjà-vu aspect of these hunting trophies, she brings them a new dimension by encasing them in leather, thus stressing contours and deep detailing and most of all elevating them to real art objects status.