People
Point of view: creativity as religion
Nutsa Modebadze is a Russian speaking designer of Georgian origin who works with leather, praising this material to the sacral rank. According to her words, nothing else turns creative idea into reality so precisely and easily. Nutsa moved from Moscow to Bali in search of necessary harmony and inner balance. So now she frequently leaves the noise world for a designer seclusion in order to create new handmade pieces and repeat all over again the mantra of most creative people: sleeping wastes the time.
In 2005 Nutsa Modebadze achived the dream of any creative person: she just made a piece that she couldn’t find in shops: something she really wanted to have. The dream was realized in a perfect form, color and texture leather bag. When she learned catching her creative mood, ideas became into life themselves. Currently all the manufacture can be called as a small designer atelier where wearable pieces of art are made manually.
How did you understand you will find your client and will have a market demand?
My first designs were the craziest. I started with pillow-bags of all sizes and textures and I started to create everything that came to my mind and I couldn’t stop for a long period of time. As a result I was sequestered in my flat for a year and only sometimes I went out to buy materials and food, went back and created again, it was a real obsession. I haven’t sold anything during first three years, only my friends knew about my new passion supporting me in everything. My friends became my target audience and were my first consumer experiment: the whole process was so fascinating that I didn’t think about money at all. When you have your friends by your side and your favorite work, you need nothing.
How did you pass from bags and shoes to clothes?
I have been working with leather for 10 years and made a lot of experiments with it. It’s an inexhaustible material, it changes and surprises me every time. I have created only bags four years and then switched to shoes. I worked from morning till night, always left work late and couldn’t stop creating, I realized
I could work with leather endless. I studied the structure of foot and the way leather adopts it: I wore it myself then corrected drawbacks, constructed comfortable insoles and outsoles. It took me three years of experiments, during it I’ve invented my own production technique which I use now in my small manufacture on Bali. After all I take blanks to my studio for work: paint, misshape and make them “old”. The rest I will keep in a secret.
Could you please tell us about your designer atelier?
Everything is made by hand from production of basis for the models up to the painting models. There are words «colored» and «painted», in my case it is the second word because all models are very individual: this includes color and shades, strokes, wrinkles on leather. We make by hands even the string fixers. I do everything myself, my workers only make models and then becomes the most interesting part of the process. Nobody except me knows the working procedure with the object, I make all the experiments myself, it’s a complex manufacturing series. I know what the final result will be because leather is a very lively material. My team in the factory consists of only four people I’ve been working with for six years, they are like my family. In my personal studio where all creative work is done I usually work only with my assistant.
How do you spend your days while creating new collection?
I work without a phone, sometimes without sleeping and having diner and when I leave the studio satisfied with the result it’s already morning. I can consider my work only the next day with a fresh eye. I never create collections by a temple, I don’t care about any trends because spirit of collection is only in the author hands. You can’t imagine how many ideas I have. I always think about my work and can do it all the time inspite of sleeping: I must say sometimes I forget even about it. The main problem is a free time for the creative work, when you get rid of all useless things and can calmly devote a week to work. I hate when I’m distracted by some daily routine. At the present moment I finished a new collection of bags and accessories. When recently I had a free week for creative process, I’ve spent not a week but a month working on new pieces. But now I’m very happy with the result: leather rings, bracelets and headwear made with combination of leather and precious metals.
Why did you choose leather?
Leather always reacts me when I touch it. It’s very lively and responsive material. I think it’s my character helps me find some common language with it, because not everyone can manage to deal with leather. I can not live without this material even a day as live without a creative process also.
Text: Yaroslav Fashchevskiy
Translated into English: Rimma Ismagilova
