If Sportswear Can't Get It Right, Natra Will
Rebecca Miller has strategically perched her camera in a spot that hides the clutter on the ground. Our mid-June video chat has interrupted her midway through Paris Fashion Week preparations, individually constructing garments from a batch of deadstock fabrics just delivered to her modest Bristol studio space. This pile of textile scraps, now hidden from my view, is the beginning stage of every collection created for Natra, the clothing brand Miller founded last year.
All Natra garments follow the same rhythm. First arrives all-natural fabrics sourced from other brands’ leftovers and deadstock. Next, the raw material is fitted with trims produced by local craftspeople. Finally, the unfinished garment is stitched together by Miller herself.
This is a simple summation of Natra's very time-intensive process, one operating in service of a grander notion. In the realm of functional sport-wear, a genre of clothing dominated by mass-produced and non-biodegradable inorganic textiles, Miller's micro-label proposes an artisanal approach to useful garments for the everyday.
“I've got a second summer collection, and I could only get 90 meters of the [deadstock] fabric. Once it's done, it’s done. I physically cannot make any more,” she tells me.
In that summer offering, you’ll find Natra’s signature windbreakers born anew, their familiar toggled hoods and elasticated hems gently contrasting against a bobbly red cotton gingham, the kind of modestly coarse material you might expect from an old picnic blanket.
In the same checkered red material, Miller has created enormous shorts and an equally voluminous skirt that, alongside the aforementioned jacket, suggest the bottom halves of a rustic homespun tracksuit.
Though this particular capsule will only be available on Natra’s website on July 3, future collections will be arriving at stores near you. Natra just landed its first stockist, London boutique Goodhood, and Japanese and American shops are lining up for the subsequent season.
Demand has reached the point where Miller, who's personally stitched every Natra garment until now, is unable to keep up alone. She’s currently racing to find a worthy manufacturer with whom she can share the production responsibilities. These aren’t grand plans for expansion, mind you. “It's still going to be super slow and crafted. And we're going to keep a certain section of the product handmade,” she promises. Such is the Natra way.
And everything about this way, where functional forms are shaped by patient craft, runs directly at odds with the established precedent of activewear. The utilitarian features and anatomical paneling are all there, mind you, accompanied by subtly smart stuff like hidden pockets. However, Natra’s is a more intentional, organic form of performance design.
It’s not just the patient craftsmanship that renders it distinct, though. “When you look at [outdoorwear brands], the menswear is absolutely spot on,” Miller says. “Then you look at the women's version and it's slimmed down [with] curves added to it and made pink. We don't want that. We want the menswear, but we want it to work for us as well.”
Natra is incidentally part of a new wave of young, semi-technical, women-owned labels challenging this staid gender divide. It sits nicely alongside ex-couturier Cecilie Bahnsen’s floral collaborative outdoor gear, for instance, or the slinkily adaptable activewear from fledgling London-based designer Johanna Parv.
But, really, Natra is a genderless line influenced by the great technical garments that once sparked Miller’s love of clothing.
Years ago, in her working-class hometown of Kingswood, Bristol, a chance sighting of C.P. Company’s signature goggle-infused jacket took Miller down the path to eventually founding Natra.
“I just remember the goggles. I was like, ‘Why the fuck are there goggles on a jacket?’” says Miller. “It's one of those things where it piques your interest and you need to know more about it. You need to understand why it was done, and why it was built.”
Now a self-confessed “Massimo Osti nerd” — Osti founded labels such as C.P. Company and Stone Island — Miller studied sportswear at Falmouth University, which eventually led to design roles at Clarks, adidas, and Tommy Hilfiger. But Natra’s most direct inspiration remains Bristol guys clad in Stoney and C.P.
Natra is an ode to those boys’ wardrobes. But it’s not built just for them. “I think women are finally saying: ‘Yeah, we like [technical clothing] too,’” says Miller. “Come on. If you're not going to do it for us, then we'll do it ourselves.”
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