WHO ARE YOU?
I am a mother of 3 children, wife to an extremely active husband, and we are both involved in many, many projects. For me, the project that drives me the most in terms of personal development and self-fulfillment is this brand H8LI, which I founded in 2017. I was living in Bordeaux and, on a trip to Tarn-et-Garonne, I visited a tannery without really knowing what I was getting into, and I completely fell in love with the material. That's how the adventure began!
WHAT WAS YOUR JOURNEY BEFORE THE H8LI ADVENTURE?
Before the H8LI adventure, I worked in fashion for a brand that had a corner at La Samaritaine. These were the early days of corner shops, the beginnings of brands having their own space in department stores. So, I worked for this brand that made men's shirts, and for the "Kookaï" brand at its inception.
Then, I got married and moved to Bordeaux where I raised my children, and during that time, I did other things. Notably, I set up an association called "L'Atelier De Soi" which was a place for women to take care of themselves when they were in difficulty. We had a team of volunteers, and with this team, we helped women in difficulty get back on track to find a job and the path to autonomy.
HOW DID YOU GET THE IDEA TO LAUNCH H8LI?
The idea came to me at the time of the Bataclan attacks. The television was on, and the images that flashed before my eyes were, first of all, horrific, but also in black and white, meaning that everyone in the streets of Paris was dressed in grey. I come from a family with rather colorful personalities because I had aunts who were couturier muses. I was quite influenced in my childhood by women who strongly wore colors. And I really, really wanted to create a women's clothing brand that would introduce colors into wardrobes. Because they have a spiritual and, in my opinion, vibrational value. It's no small thing to confidently wear orange when you're a lawyer going to a big business meeting.
The starting point is the deep, intimate desire to create color. Then, the medium that presented itself to me was this material, for which I find no equivalent, because it is an extremely noble material. It's sheepskin, a very particular breed of sheep called "entrefinos." The skins are shipped to Tarn-et-Garonne, after the sheep have been raised for the food industry. Rather than incinerating them, they are transported to a small town called "Graulhet" where there is a tradition of tanning. Tanners are like leather dressers but for sheep. And they transform this natural material into something very modern and sophisticated since it becomes stretch. It's natural, not fake. We process the skin with acid-base baths to open the pores of the skin, then there is an adhesion of a cotton and lycra fabric. Then, the skin, having been prepared, is able to match the elasticity of the fabric. These skins, if they weren't transformed, would be incinerated. They are transformed at the tannery into an incomparable material. Then I come into the picture at this point in the story because I didn't invent any of this, it's a French patent. What I do is when I go to the Tarn, I work on colors and try to create collections of colors that are a bit different from others with this material. Then, the skins are shipped to Porto in Portugal where a manufacturing workshop transforms them into pants, jackets, and various garments that I work on upstream with a pattern maker who creates the patterns.
YOUR TYPICAL DAY?
I don't arrive at the Showroom very early because I'm not an early riser. So I usually arrive around 10 am and my day is non-stop. I'm busy labeling, inventorying, organizing pop-ups, private sales, events... I also really enjoy working with music. In fact, I don't rule out creating playlists; I do a lot of that and I might do it under the H8LI name. I had the opportunity to do it for a fashion show that was organized for my brand, and I worked a lot on the music, and I find there's something extremely complete about working with material and music at the same time.
YOUR FAVORITE PIECE?
For me, the most extraordinary pair of trousers I've ever made - it might not be my absolute favorite because I find it hard to choose just one - is a tie-dye pair. And making tie-dye with leather is very complicated because we're not delivered rolls of fabric, but individual skins. I buy the skins by the square foot. We took each skin, put elastic bands every 10 centimeters, and then dyed the skins in tie-dye. Honestly, on cotton, it's not a feat, but on leather, it's a feat!
With a simple, very plain navy blue sweater and small boots, these pants are amazing. My favorite? I don't know, but they are the most unusual I've made.
WHERE DO YOU FIND INSPIRATION FOR YOUR COLLECTIONS?
Well, I find a lot of inspiration in decoration, in fabrics, in painting... I have all the color charts from all the paint manufacturers because it's quite subtle and generally the colors are already very refined and they speak well of the color subtlety I'm looking for. That is to say, I'm not at all into primary colors; I like colors that are already a bit worked: not true yellows, not true blues, not true greens. Sometimes I arrive with pots of India ink or samples of paint pots. I also really love DMC cotton threads, embroidery threads, tapestry threads. It's also a form of painting, and so I often look in flea markets for old stocks of tapestry threads that are a bit old, because there are colors that are no longer made that interest me a lot.
YOUR BEST MEMORY SO FAR?
My fashion show. It was the first time I had organized a fashion show. This show took place in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The moment when the music played very loud and I was hidden in the garden, no one could see me, but I saw the people and the models wearing my creations, my colors, and my music. Well, I honestly think that's a very, very beautiful memory, apart from the birth of my children, romantic memories, but professionally, I think it's my best memory. It took place at the end of August 2021, and I don't rule out doing others.
Find the H8LI brand at https://h8li.paris/