Natalie Chanin at work designing for her new kitchen line, which she is developing in partnership with Heath Ceramics in Sausalito, Calif.
Natalie Chanin displays her barbecued bridal gowns on box springs as a nod to an old rural-South way of barbecuing. “Sometimes people would just dig a hole in the ground, throw the bedsprings over the hole and cook the hog on the bedsprings.”ABOUT THE DESIGNERNatalie Chanin attended Red Bank High School as a sophomore, then transferred to Notre Dame High School for her junior and senior years in 1977-79.She is founder and creative director of Alabama Chanin in Florence, Ala., and her work has been featured in Vogue, Time, New York Times and Town & Country.A member of the invitation-only Council of Fashion Designers of America, she was a 2009 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist and selected for the 2010 Global Triennial exhibition, “Why Design Now?” by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.Sources: Alabamachanin.com, Waterhouse Public RelationsIF YOU GOWhat: Natalie Chanin exhibition, part of Crafted by Southern Hands seriesWhere: Warehouse Row, 1110 Market St., through AugustAdmission: FreeInformation: craftedbysouthernhands.comSchedule• Thursday: Opening reception, 1110 Market St., Motor Court between Warehouse Row buildings, 6-8 p.m. Party sponsored by Southern Hands includes cocktails, beer, food from Jim ‘n Nick’s Bar-B-Q.• Friday-Saturday: Trunk Show, Amanda Pinson Jewelry, 1110 Market St., Warehouse Row South Building, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday; noon-4 p.m. Saturday.• Saturday: Natalie Chanin and staff of Alabama Chanin lead A sewing workshop; participants will learn her method of hand-stitching and how to sew reverse appliqués. Warehouse Row event space, 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m., $475 includes all materials for take-home project and lunch catered by Public House. Reservation deadline is today. Register online at alabamachanin.com.
Being invited to show her work at the Southern Foodways Alliance was a high honor and huge challenge for fashion designer Natalie Chanin, so she knew she needed to come up with something unusual.
“The symposium in Oxford, Miss., takes place over three days. It’s where some of the most creative, interesting and impressive food people from not only the South but around the world converge,” she explains. “Each year they have a theme, and last year it was barbecue.”
Chanin cooked up a couture fashion display so unexpected that it’s still being talked about a year later.
“It occurred to me that we should just barbecue some dresses because pitmasters would be there. The dresses would be infused with the smell of barbecue. It seemed to me the most straightforward thing in the world,” she says, laughing during a phone interview from her studio in Florence, Ala.