Anybody who hangs out on Via Solferino in Milan will be familiar with Nathalie Jean’s boutique. Despite 25 years spent travelling the world as an architect, her true passion, and now her profession, has always been for jewellery.

Since 2014, Nathalie has been designing collections for her boutique and for luxury fashion brands of such calibre as Versace, Montblanc, Christofle, Damiani and Swarovski.

Her creations are part of the permanent collections at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Chicago Athenaeum and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal.

Nathalie told us a bit about her daily life, her work and her favourite wine: Klinec.

“I was born in Canada and I’ve lived in Milan for 30 years. I work a lot, I don’t really like holidays but I love travelling. I have a 22-year-old daughter, the love of my life, who moved to Germany four years ago to study at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

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Nowadays, I don’t run out of the house at the crack of dawn like I used to. I take things more slowly in the morning, working from home and doing yoga with my teacher. I go to the boutique at 13:30 and open at 14:00. As well as receiving customers there, I design jewellery collections for the shop and for other brands. I close around 20:30 and very often somebody pops in to invite me to Dry or Pisacco for a drink or a bite to eat.

As well as being my workplace, that section of Via Solferino is an important part of my social life. Pisacco and Dry were opened by a group of people that I know very well, I’ve known some of them since I first moved to Milan 30 years ago. It was no coincidence that I opened the boutique next to Pisacco, I feel at home in these parts.

It was at Pisacco that I fell in love with wine! I am no expert and it was Klinec that did it for me. I love everything about it: the colour, the freshness, the taste. I love it so much that I introduced all my friends to it and so I really associate it with friendship now.”

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