In 2006, Natalie and the Alabama Chanin team build and launch a small online store along with a new weblog called the “Alabama Chanin Journal.”
The Archives
Leslie Hoffman of Earth Pledge asks Natalie to write a short paper for inclusion in their Future Fashion White Papers.
Alabama Chanin shows garments from their 2008 and 2009 collections in the Pratt Institute’s Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion exhibition. Curated by Francesca Granata and Sarah Scaturro, the exhibition examines the relationship between fashion and sustainability, serving as a call-to-action. Alabama Chanin is featured alongside innovative designers and artists including Bodkin, Susan Cianciolo, Kelly Cobb, Loomstate, Suno, Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, Sans, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Uluru, Andrea Zittel, and Tiprin Follett. In the exhibition catalogue’s forward, Julie Gilhart of Barneys New York writes: “Ethics + Aesthetics effectively broadens the reach of sustainable fashion, showing the visitor that...
Natalie is inducted as a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), a prestigious not-for-profit organization that celebrates rising and heritage American designers.
Along with Isabel and Ruben Toledo and Maria Cornejo, Natalie is named a finalist in the Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Awards.
The collection debuted at New York Fashion Week and is featured on the cover of WWD Magazine’s September 12, 2005 issue, which includes a recap of collections shown for the upcoming season.
Through her Project Alabama designs, Natalie is selected as an emerging designer to watch by UPS (United Parcel Service), in collaboration with 7th on Sixth. Ten fashion designers, selected from a field of 300, show in Bryant Park during Olympus Fashion Week.
Natalie collaborates with British visual artist Rob Ryan on a series of intricate stencil designs. Inspired by Ryan’s style of elaborate drawings and paper cuttings, the collection is interwoven with embroidered versions of Ryan’s playful work.
In the early 1990s, Natalie meets Eva Whitechapel in Vienna, Austria. Between 2003 and 2005, Whitechapel contributes textile and garment designs to Project Alabama.
Alabama Chanin is officially founded on September 22, 2006. Five years after Natalie’s first Project Alabama collection, the organization begins a new chapter with two employees and twenty-two sewers, many of whom had been a part of the project since its inception.