Can’t fly to France? Non problème. Let these designer plates from Home MNL take you there. Tres chic!
Sometimes, Paris feels like a distant memory or, worse, a fantasy, like sitting on a velvet bench at the best table, a haute spot, at La Maison du Çaviar against a backdrop of de Gournay wallpaper, lit dramatically by the sea urchin-shaped chandeliers on the gold leaf-gilded ceiling. Worse yet, even eating out now avec des amis is only mostly a dream, at least until this pandémie en folie is over and we can put all these dine-in restrictions behind us.
But this is why Chris Nick delos Reyes has something entirely new up his designer sleeve. The young creative, whose personal brand and collections of late have so strongly been built around the idea of Paris, has forayed into home design, collaborating with online-based purveyor of curated living essentials Home MNL.
Chris Nick must have been Parisian in his past life. In fashion as well as in this new venture of his, a capsule collection of aesthetic plates, he has mastered what the French call je ne sais quoi, with which he imbues whatever he does, whether an evening dress or a bottle of home scent or a piece of furniture.
“I’ve always been very passionate about home design. In fact, before deciding to take up fashion design, I had interior design in mind,” says Chris Nick. “There is just something about being able to decorate or create your own space that brings so much joy. As in fashion, I find joy in transporting someone, myself included, into a world I created.”
‘In fact, before deciding to take up fashion design, I had interior design in mind.’
The designer has always had plans to expand his eponymous fashion house with a home label. “Luckily this project came sooner than I thought during lockdown,” he says. “Chef Francis Tolentino, a good friend of mine and owner of Home MNL, asked if his team could collaborate with me in creating a few designs for the brand. I jumped at the opportunity.”
Chris Nick need not look very far. In his work in fashion, tres chic has always been the ultimate impression he wishes everything he creates to make. To come up with his first collection for Home MNL, he only had to draw from the style signature he has long established in his fashion repertoire as well as from his eternal affaire d’amour with the City of Paris. “I wanted to bring a little bit of both into the homes of others with this collaboration with Home MNL,” he says. “So I sketched some of my pieces and phrases to describe the Chris Nick woman—a woman who is indeed très chic and has that certain je ne sais quoi to her. Naturally, in a black, white, and gold motif.”
Bon, bref, the next time you crave French-grown Baeri caviar at your luxury haunt on Champs-Élysées or the galette with smoked herring you once had at a creperie in Marais, set up the table á la mode and play a little Edith Piaf. “Non, je ne regrette rien” est fortement recommandé, “Non, je ne regrette rien” comes highly recommended. Keep the volume down, so it plays as if from a 1960s radio. With these plates on the table, you are sure to cry oh là là and mean it the way the French do when presented with something surprising or worthy of appreciation.
Voilà, bon appétit! Everything comes true, when you dream it in French.
These designer plates are now available online at www.myhomemnl.com and on Instagram at @homemnl
