With his sharp creativity and angelic allure, Nicolas Theil’s gaze carries the energy of paradox and the intelligence of his approach. Expatriated to Japan at the age of 14, he spent his teenage years immersed in an environment of limitless nocturnal imagination. Returning to France a few years later, he attended an engineering school – where, oppressed by the constraints of formal construction, he discovered a passion for art and drawing – before entering the Duperré school, where he specialized in accessories.
Between trips to the ends of the earth and internships with top designers, Nicolas Theil registered his own brand, then joined the prestigious Jean-Paul Gaultier team, with whom he has collaborated since 2008.
His work is inspired by a generational preoccupation: the future of the world, destruction, reconstruction… “For me, these notions are intrinsic to life. I have faith in nature, in man, and I love the mark he leaves on the stone he polishes, the leather he tans”. Leather, the basic element of his collection, which he agglomerates, creases, structures and destructures, as if to make his own the nature he cherishes, as if to sublimate it.
His spring-summer 2012 collection, designed in his Parisian workshops and produced exclusively in France, is inspired by the dualities that inhabit the designer. Construction and destruction, birth and death, evolution and decay… Opposites that give life to an entity: the source, the origin, from chaos to rebirth, the high point of Nicolas Theil’s creations.
“I started imagining the latest collection while walking on a beach: washed up on the sand were more plastic materials than cuttlefish bones. The idea was to ask the ultimate question, to confront an audience with this painful mystery: how do we get out of it? Nicolas Theil recycles his offcuts, working with propylene for its durability and practicality. But he doesn’t stop there in the paradox: the border between masculinity and femininity is thin in his imagination, and his creations are often mixed. This mix is expressed through contradictory materials, shapes and details.
For example, his Pomme line of bags and jewelry is an original symbol, a supreme temptation. Nicolas Theil sees the Fruit as the extension of the branch, the beginning of life, but also as its end, materialized by the fall.
Or his Serpent bracelet, which wraps around the wrist at the wearer’s will, a unique and strange object.
Bags for all – clutches, days, evenings and 48h, but also necklaces and bracelets – in sober, easy-to-live-with colors, the bag becomes a symbol. From structured lines to refined designs, Nicolas Theil uses simplicity as a means of expression.
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