All About Our Story
ÆMILIA BARCELONA
Æmilia Barcelona®
Æmilia Barcelona® is a French-Spanish high-end couture brand specialising in the creation of elegant, original and eco-friendly textile gifts.
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My name is Émilie, from the Latin Æmilia
How many Emilies, born like me in the 1980s, adopted the graceful adjective from Philippe Chatel's famous song as their middle name? Émilie Jolie...
Was this the seedbed of my love for beauty? Perhaps, after all. Thank you, Philippe! In any case, this love was the subject of many predictions during my childhood. And it is also what later led me to the world of communications and marketing: this desire to make almost everything beautiful, even things that weren't.
It seems obvious that the mafia of organised lies was not the right place to defend and share my humanist values, such as freedom, human dignity, honesty, tolerance, critical thinking, fraternity and respect for life.
But it took me time to internalise this, to experience it over and over again, until I fully accepted that my place was not there, that through art and craftsmanship, I had much more to offer.
Ecosophy to understand our true place in the world
As someone who loves life, I often find myself in nature. In the heart of Garraf Natural Park, I breathe.
I watch my dog run freely, I observe robins, redstarts, hoopoes, magpies, grey wagtails, sometimes parakeets, I listen to their songs, join in their conversations, catch up with my friend the carob tree, crumple and smell the sprigs of thyme, rosemary and lavender, and these moments fill me with happiness.
Nature, wherever it may be, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for many creators. It teaches us sobriety, the impermanence of things, cycles, pure beauty, fragility as well as strength, and resilience too.
Nature is both our muse and our oxygen.
On that note, I have personally observed that watching a squirrel scurry around does not nourish me as much as picking up dirty socks. And I have a very personal theory about this.
Like many of you, I am constantly chasing time, and apart from my creative moments and yoga sessions, I find it extremely difficult to practise mindfulness in a daily routine punctuated by work, housework, school runs, cooking, homework, pets, games, shopping, admin, arguments...
And then, in the heat of the moment, my gaze falls on a beautiful object lying around, and in a second at most, beauty awakens me: I am spontaneously reconnected to the present moment. Fully there.
These beautiful things that I love to create with my hands, into which I put a kind and sincere intention, with which I express my view of the world, I imagine them making you smile, making you press pause, making you feel good. And even if art is not expected to be useful, this idea delights me.
A Breton designer based in Barcelona
I arrived in Spain in the summer of 2019, in the charming Catalan town of Castelldefels: a privileged location south of Barcelona, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Garraf Natural Park.
Moving abroad meant I had to close my first sewing workshop, which was based in Poitou. With 100% French and eco-friendly materials and a 100% local clientele, it was impossible to relocate such a business without losing its soul.
It took me five years before I could even think about setting up a new workshop here in the Barcelona area.
Æmilia Barcelona, my new brand of artisanal textile creations, inspired me to do something lighter and more personal. With it, I simply let myself be carried away by the pleasure of fully expressing my creativity and my art of living.
And if sowing these little fragments of beauty, colour and light into your daily life helps to make you happier, you will see how fulfilled I am.
Tous les penseurs, sans chercher
Qui finit ou qui commence,
Sculptent le même rocher :
Ce rocher, c'est l'art immense.
Poème à M. Froment Meurice, Les Contemplations, Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Æmilia Barcelona® and the power of contemplation
Do you, too, ever doubt whether you've watered the plants properly or locked the door before leaving? We perform these small, everyday actions so mechanically that it's difficult to assign them, each and every one of them, the appropriate time and space: was it this morning? Yesterday?
While we've learned to perfectly optimize our time by completing our tasks like a well-oiled machine, we can still observe a downside: we're not really there, with what we're doing. We're thinking about everything except the here and now.
But is it really important to engage in mindfulness when we're picking up a disgusting mess of hair from the bottom of the bathroom sink?
Actually, yes. It's even crucial, because reconnecting with the present moment is essential for our mental health. It reduces our stress, soothes us, and holds another power: that of rekindling our original joy.