Nathalie Verlinden: a short biography
Nathalie Verlinden is a Belgian shoe designer. She currently lives and works in Belgium (Antwerp) and Italy (Marche). Nathalie designed her first pair of handmade shoes in 1994 when finishing art-school in Antwerp. She went on to study sculpture at the Antwerp Art Academy and worked for Dries Van Noten in his Antwerp store.
Simultaneously, Nathalie pursued her passion for shoes enrolling in a course for artisan shoemaking at the Brucemo in Brussels. Subsequently, Nathalie left for Indonesia where she made shoes for friends and family, all handmade in a small atelier. The Belgian atelier Prabel was impressed with the result and Nathalie’s designs and advised her to go to Italy to pursue her dream.
In 2000 the real adventure started when Nathalie arrived in Italy. Being a woman and a new designer in the male dominated world of shoemaking Nathalie nevertheless succeeded in being respected making a collection under her own label. By now Nathalie is working with four different ateliers in the Marche-region to realise her collections.
Apart from the collections under the label ‘ Nathalie Verlinden’ she also created the shoe-collections for Raf Simons (2004) and has realised since 2006 the collection of shoes for Bruno Pieters.
In 2009 Nathalie was nominated for the Culture-award as best designer in Belgium and took part in the exhibition ´In her Shoes´ in Museum Hasselt.
In 2011 she started a cooperation with the NY brand Kicokids. And Nathalie received an award with her kids collection from Milk Magazine.
The Nathalie Verlinden Collections (shoes for kids, women and bags) are exclusively made out of natural materials:
• Certified naturally tanned leather (tested in Germany, without chrome)
• stitched soles
• wooden or leather heels (no plastics in side)
• water based glue
• analyses for comfortable forms
Each season the very personal designs of Nathalie are connected to a theme such as ‘French painters in the 19th century’ , ‘ in Perpetuity Forever’ , ‘ Wilderness’,…
All the collections are presented in Paris at Playtime and Première Classe and Scoop in London.