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When Nalata Nalata first opened its brick-and-mortar store on the western edge of New York City’s East Village, Google Maps mistakenly classified it as an art gallery, which is only kind of off-base.
The brainchild of partners Angélique Chmielewski and Steve Aung — the former a fashion designer, the latter an industrial designer — is quiet, small and filled with natural light. It is not, however, stuffed with products. In its 500 square feet of space, there are roughly 40 products on display at any given time. More often than not, each product is handmade by a Japanese craftsman and comes with a small placard that provides context on the maker, the region it came from, materials and process.
The couple is from opposite Canadian coasts, but they met at school in the middle at Edmonton’s University of Alberta. Each was surrounded by incredible designers and artisans for work, and as such aspired to surround themselves with a similar level of genius elsewhere. And so they did.
Nalata Nalata started as an e-commerce platform hellbent on doing more than just selling incredible products. They wanted to tell the stories of the people who made them (browse through the journal on the site for dozens and dozens of original studio tours in far-flung regions of Japan).
