The Brands I’m Loving Seeing Open Their Doors: Featuring NAMAI Studio

Arguably the hardest part of being a creative is the backlog of photos that piles up. Having too much content is technically a good problem to have, but every once in a while something comes along that earns its place to cut the line.

NAMAI was one of those things.

I photographed NAMAI Studio this past weekend for the grand opening of its new store in Rhinebeck, New York. The doors opened on Saturday, September 12th, and by the end of the day I had photographed customers trying on pieces, friends and colleagues of the founder, familiar faces from other independent brands and plenty of locals who had come out to see what had just opened in their town.

There was a lot happening in the room, but what I kept noticing was the people.

A BRAND I HAD BEEN WAITING FOR

Bianca Kuttikattu, the founder of NAMAI, has a fashion background that includes ACME, Rag & Bone and other fashion houses. Her friends and colleagues came to celebrate her, locals came to discover the store, and I ran into people I had met through other parts of the independent fashion community, including Catherine, the founder of Eleven Six, who I originally met at Fine Day Fair.

I also met women doing things I never would have expected to encounter at a fashion store opening, including psychologists who are also women monks. That is one of my favorite things about showing up to these kinds of gatherings. You never really know who you are going to meet or what connection might come from simply being in the room.

And this particular room was a long time coming for me.

I first discovered NAMAI years ago while working on my Master's in Design for Sustainability at SCAD. I included the brand in my Locals World research magazine while studying the relationships between designers, artisans, early supply chains and buyers, and the different people involved in getting a designer's vision into the world.

I remember being fascinated by that space in between. Who makes something, who designs it, who helps bring it to market, who discovers it and eventually who gets to wear it?

NAMAI stayed with me.

It was one of the first brands in a long time that I had genuinely put on my vision board as a brand I wanted to work with. I had been following the brand for years, so getting a few texts going back and forth, having the timing line up and finally having the courage to ask if I could offer my new creative services felt like one of those moments where a dream quietly turns into an actual Tuesday afternoon.

I ended up offering the right services at the right time to the right client.

And now I have my own NAMAI jacket, a new client, a camera roll full of photographs and a trip upstate that I probably would have taken anyway. Except this time, I got paid to do something I love while I was there.

That feels pretty good.

MY FAVORITE KIND OF NEW YORK FASHION WEEK

Maybe this is my favorite kind of New York Fashion Week. Not the runway shows or the front row, but finding designers doing something interesting in a small town and watching people come out to see it.

Rhinebeck has been called “the Amagansett of upstate,” and NAMAI feels right at home there. Each piece in the store is one-of-one, made in India, and the collection has the kind of craftsmanship and personality that makes you want to get closer and actually look at what you're holding.

That is what I want more of.

Not necessarily more brands. More discovery.

I want to find the woman who has been quietly making something incredible for years. I want to walk into a store and wonder who chose everything on the rack. I want to meet the designer, learn where something was made, hear why she started and understand why her work ended up in that particular place.

I'M NOT JUST RESEARCHING IT ANYMORE

I think I've always been interested in the relationship between the thing and everything around it.

The designer and the artisan. The brand and the retailer. The founder and the customer. The business and the town it becomes part of.

Maybe that is why my work has started to feel less like a traditional creative service and more like my own little PR agency.

I get to photograph the brands I discover. I get to exist amongst their gatherings and meet the people who are building them. I get to write about them, share them with my own community and connect them to other people and places.

And maybe now I get to represent them, too.

There is something really fun about the idea that I can wear my NAMAI jacket around town and eventually someone will ask me where I got it. I don't need a sales pitch. I can just tell them about the store in Rhinebeck, tell them about Bianca and send them there.

That feels like the most natural kind of brand representation to me.

It is also the kind of PR I actually want to do. Not just getting a brand in front of more people, but becoming genuinely familiar with the people behind it, understanding what makes it special and helping those stories travel from one person to another.

SOMETIMES THE BEST SHOPPING IS RIGHT NEXT DOOR

Sometimes the best shopping is right next door. You just have to look closely.

There are designers opening stores in towns you might normally drive through, women building businesses around things they care deeply about, artisans making things by hand and independent retailers creating collections you would never find by searching for “what's trending.”

Those are the brands I want to see more of.

And maybe more importantly, those are the brands I want to keep finding.

NAMAI is a pretty perfect example of why.

I found the brand years ago, put it in my research magazine, put it on my vision board and eventually asked if there might be a way to work together. Years later, I was standing inside their new store photographing the people who had come to celebrate it.

I'm still interested in the same relationships I was studying back then. The difference is that I'm not just researching them anymore.

I'm in the room.

And I think that is where I want to stay.