Nathalie Jean. To Be a Control Freak

Born in Montreal, where she studied architecture and worked on skyscrapers, museums and large urban projects, Nathalie Jean moved to Italy to join Ettore Sottsass’s studio. There she learned to design interiors and, above all, to work with the heart, instinctively. After more than twenty years as an architect, many of them spent designing fashion boutiques, she felt the need to make things with her own hands. Folding paper and cardboard, she created a series of necklaces based on rotational geometry. It was the first step towards jewellery made entirely in her own workshop, in limited editions or as one-off pieces, free from the demands of clients and companies. Having grown up in a family of scientists, Jean sees architecture, design and jewellery as the same discipline at different scales.