Paule Tenaillon designed her first pair of shoes when she was 12 years old. “It was a huge platform and a crazy shape – very creative, not at all wearable,” she laughs, speaking at the Notting Hill pop-up of Nomasei, the cult brand she co-founded with Marine Braquet in 2019 (due to Covid things didn’t really get going until a couple of years later). The Parisian-designed, Italian-made shoes have in the last five years become a coded arbiter of not just style but knowing. Renowned for exceptional comfort as well as cool, Nomasei counts Bella Hadid, Sarah Jessica Parker and Nicole Kidman as fans.
Tenaillon has serious pedigree. After her fledgling start, inspired and abetted by her uncle who has a shoe shop in Perigueux, South West France, she “always knew what I wanted to do.” That drive saw her study at Studio Berçot in Paris, before working for Givenchy, Andrew Gn and Stéphane Kélian where she learned the art of real French shoe-making. After a stint in New York, she had a five-year sojourn in Buenos Aires where rather brilliantly she set up her own tango shoe business in her twenties. “I was having a lot of fun,” she recalls. “I was dancing every night.” After political instability in Argentina, she returned to Paris, working in Laurence Dacade’s studio where she designed shoes for Jil Sander and Chanel as well as Dacade’s own label. Later, she moved to Chloé where she met Braquet, who was working as a collection manager. “We fell in professional love, we became friends, it was very easy.”
It was Braquet’s idea to start their own brand, with them both frustrated by the relentless pace of luxury brands. “I was really tired of the rhythm,” she recalls. “When I first started [in my twenties], we were doing two collections a year. We would have months to research. It was amazing, time to make good prototypes. By the time I was at Chloé, we were doing 10 collections a year, and huge collections. We didn’t have the time to finish. The shoe is a very technical object; you can’t compress the time you need to make a shoe that is comfortable and well made.” She felt that factory relationships were declining. “We became people who were always demanding more,” she continues. “Luxury began to behave like fast fashion, but the prices were not the same.”
Neatly, that disillusionment fed directly into the slow fashion Nomasei ethos – the word means “six hands”. “The hands of each person that make Nomasei a reality,” says Tenaillon. “We can dream alone, but we need the village to make it happen.” Indeed, they work in such unison with their Tuscan factory in Montopoli that the factory owners have shares in the company. “We value the work of every person to the client; we want to give her the best quality ever.”
The design concept of the brand is simple. “We wanted to make luxury shoes in a way that was accessible to women like us. Shoes for real women. Real life, not a fantasy. Not for the woman you dream to be, for the woman you are now. You run to your appointment, to the office, you take the stairs, the subway. You need to be comfortable but stylish.”
Noting the idea of comfort “wasn’t sexy”, but is obviously essential, Tenaillon poured everything she knew about making tango shoes into her process, as well as offering the ultimate wear-test – dance nights, aided by dancers from Moulin Rouge or Crazy Horse. “It’s crazy but always accessible. We ask for fun choreography that is easy for everybody. We have women that are not dancers, they have so much fun.”
As for style, they have it in spades. It is very much the thinking woman’s It-shoe – punchy but practical. The signature Nono loafer – in block, duo or trio colours – is a riff on the elaborate menswear styles of “Versailles and Tamara de Lepicki, men from the 1930s” and sits around the £500 mark. At their pop-up events, they bring extra leather colours from the factory so clients can make them fully customisable.
“Women are wearing them in so [many] different ways, I love when they take risks, when it’s not too classic. Our English clients are very cool. They have an originality in their clothes. They take risks. They are fun. It is super inspiring for me.”
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Marine and Paule.
Courtesy of NomaseiThe Nomasei London pop-up runs from 12 to the 22 November at 2 Blenheim Crescent, London W11 2NN