NEW YORK
New York is a symbolic city for us. We officially launched Nomasei there in November 2019, and today, a large part of our customers is New Yorkers or live in NY.
As a designer, I have always had a strong connection with New York. I first lived and worked there, left, andsomehow kept coming back. But more than anything, New York has shaped and inspired me because the city served as the setting for so many films that have influenced my taste and creative identity—moviesl ike Taxi Driver by Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch’s Permanent Vacation or Night on Earth, John Cassavetes’ Opening Night or Gloria, and the early Woody Allen films from the ’70s with Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep.
With all this cinematic New York in my heart, when we decided to open a pop-up in the city, it became obvious that we had to film Nomasei stories there. I shared the idea with Madeleine Combourieu, a very young filmmaker whose sensitivity I particularly admire and with whom we
had already worked. She quickly came up with scenario ideas, and from there, our creative ping-pong began—between my concrete vision of the city and her imagined New York.
The common thread in all our stories is sisterhood. Nomasei women recognize each other, they become friends, they start dancing together, they support one another or cover for each other at work—just long enough to slip away and dance for a few minutes. We witness this sisterhood every day in our pop-ups and in our Paris showroom, when customers meet and start talking as if they had known each other forever.
We chose to replace fashion models with dancers to embody Nomasei in a more tangible way, leaning towards cinema rather than fashion. There are two film series: one featuring Brie Welch and Renata Pereira Lima, and the other with Molly Rumble and Minami Ando—four New York dancers, four Nomasei women.
From these films, we extracted still images—screen shots of instants that reinforce the idea that Nomasei is always about women in motion.
I hope you’ll love these films as much as we do.
Love, Paule
