MASHA KEJA, luxury French leather goods house
What should I start with ... Is it a serious car accident in Morocco that ended my modeling career, just started in Paris? Or when, a year later, I arrived freshly in Lancel's creative office, in a room dedicated to prototyping, and where I devoured the least movement of Thi-Thou, the prototypist who assembled with ease parcels of leather after my sketches? And the leather, its smell was so vivid, so pleasant! ... Or, just a few years earlier, when one of my teachers at the School of Fine Arts in Belarus decided to bring us to Moscow, a small group of students and me, see the exhibition of haute couture pieces of the house Yves Saint Laurent? And there, admiring and trying to memorize forever the precision and elegance of the assembly, the mystery of the feathers, the textures and the incredible colors of his sublime dresses I imagined to wear or even better, to create for him, Yves, something divine ...
And to all that I will add Paris! The city where I found myself a little by chance at twenty years old and where I finally stayed. This city has played a fundamental role in my artistic training. Paris with its rainy days and its gray-pink paving stones, the beige color of its Haussmann buildings and their pretty balconies in black guipure; this city has spellbound me.
And so, many years later, my dreams and enchantments were transformed into the creation of my own Maison de Maroquinerie Française. Parisian for 25 years, and through my collections of accessories I want to share a very particular style, the Parisian style. I am speaking to a woman who lives in an international, multicultural city, is hard to surprise. And this woman in the image of the city where she lives becomes herself extremely demanding. Determined in its tastes it easily mixes utility comfort with the exceptional. And she knows how to recognize the exception!
We are rich in our education and our history. I want to speak in my creations of this unique French story. And it is very moving to combine the modern forms with ancestral techniques.
Outside of creation, Paris taught me to take the time. The time it takes to think and study the small details, the proportion, which will make the object a piece of desire. This permanent search for aesthetics and pleasure is important to me, it becomes an Art of Living. To create well you must first learn to appreciate well.
Are we talking about hedonism? Certainly. In the correct meaning of the term. But what would become of life if there was nothing to admire?