- Could you present yourself ?
I am Antoinette Chalumeau, the SIDE PROJECT‘s founder. Born in New York in the 90’s, I am left-handed and I have a twin brother. I grew up in Paris where I studied fashion before to go back across the Atlantic to work as textile designer within different brands as Alexander Wang and Marc Jacobs. I recently came back in Paris, I founded SIDE PROJECT a year ago.
- Where does this interest for fashion come from ?
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that you get the power to choose who you want to be and to express yourself through your way to dress up. From the outset, my point of view about fashion has always been very narrative and cinematic, I love clothes which tell you a story and which create great pictures. This is also the social function of clothes which made my choice to work as a fashion designer.
Something of a swiss knife, isn’t it ?
For me, as soon as one gets an aesthetic vision, it can be applied to any kind of creation. And a good creative is as able to design and conceptualize clothes as a car, for example. Yet technique is essential to give life to ideas, that’s why dress designer is not the same job as industrial designer.
With SIDE PROJECT, I’m mostly inspired by savoir-faire for designing my creations, but my reflection and conceptualization process stays the same whether it’s for designing a stool or a skirt or to pass my ideas to craftsmen I work with.
Otherwise, today’s consuming habits is not as segmented as it used to be ; just as the ways of commercializing clothes. Fashion has generalized so much that people don’t just buy clothing because they need it, but also for what it reflects. On SIDE PROJECT, I try to keep clothing as the centre of the concept but a whole universe comes out of it, even if it’s at a small scale for the moment. In our digitalized, entrepreneur era, people tend to spend more time at home, and their living or working space must fit to the « character » they are day after day through their clothes. Today we don’t adopt a clothing trend, but a way of life and all what it engenders. People have been plagued by « too much choice » for decades, now they fell like being guided in their way to consume. With SIDE PROJECT, I create clothes, items and jewelry, but I also commit myself with crafts and ethical production methods.
What inspire you ?
My inspirations are very varied, I think it’s all the cognitive things I sense in this world and the way I apprehend them, it can be a movie, a trip, a remembrance, a song, a scent, an emotion, a feeling, people, my friends, a word, a text, a piece of art, a material, a texture, a technique, a piece of fabric, an item, a noise, anyway, everything that can give birth to an idea.
• What are your future projects ?
I’m preparing SIDE PROJECT’s FW 17/18 collection, and will present it in march during PFW. I’m very excited because I’m currently working on a project with a workshop of Moroccan weavers that use ancestral weaving looms created more than a century ago. And also I hope I could bring SIDE PROJECT around the world to continue discovering craftsmen and savoir-faire around the globe.
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