She receives flat. Sitting in her beautifully furnished bright living room, Karine Arabian wears, with her burgundy pants, her white shirt and her navy blue sweater, dark gray socks in a pair of black leather clogs. “I don’t wear heels anymore”, says this granddaughter of a bootmaker, daughter of a suit and a panty maker, who, from 2000, nevertheless made a name for herself in women’s shoes by combining high heels, round toes ( when fashion was for pointed or square toes) and comfort.
Contrary to young labels who have invested in digital as an El Dorado, they prefer “pop-up homes”: physical meetings at home, with friends or with volunteers.
“Today, I want neutrality, purity. Fashion often likes to talk about timelessness and, to achieve this, you have to remove the superfluous, keep a line. » That’s what JN is all about. Mellor Club, his new label: a project launched in 2019 and developed with his companion, Franck Blais. “Nothing too flashy or under the influence”, no marketing gibberish, no senseless hype, but a concern for genre fluidity, localism, upcycling and spontaneity.
All this represents “the fruit of a long maturation”, she underlines, floating years to find her spirits, hours of discussion to sharpen her desires. In 2015, crushed by “conflicts and deep weariness”, Karine Arabian, in a strange duplication, slammed the door of Karine Arabian, the brand that bore her name and that she had founded with the help of her cousin, Daniel Yeremian.
In the heyday, 8,000 pairs were sold there a year, for a turnover close to 3 million euros. In the wake of this departure, she “a kind of burnout”. “I could no longer create or reflect. I was coming out of years of intense work, where I imagined, in addition to bags and jewelry, collections of around fifty models, of which only four or five really floated in commercial terms. Suddenly, I invested myself elsewhere: in my relationship, my family, my life. I liked, saw exhibitions, prepared food, changed my outlook, as if to clear my eyes. »
Start from a blank page
But what to do when the page is blank? Initially, Karine Arabian was convinced of it, she was going to relaunch a brand of shoes, made of pieces “very luxury, very sculptural”. On Instagram, after all, some of her most loyal customers send her sweet nothings to keep her coming back… “But footwear is a capital-intensive industry. And then, little by little, my desire deflated. My thirst for revenge has died down. »
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