Synth up / NATTAUP

Tales of intimacy and desire shared in the darkness. Presenting the latest Synth Up campaign by the unisex essentials fashion brand NATTAUP, along with a chat with the designer.

What was the initial spark that drew you to fashion design and how has your vision evolved since then?

In the beginning everything was instinctive. I wasn’t designing for trends I was designing for a feeling: the space where support meets desire where intimacy can exist without being exposed. For me clothing was never decoration. It was containment and it was trust.
Over time that instinct opened into a larger vision. NATTAUP gradually became less about personal expression and more about building a system one that considers community longevity and how garments actually live with people. Gender stopped being a statement and became a given. Sustainability shifted from ideology to practice: designing less but with intention permanence and the ability to evolve over time.
Today I’m less interested in aesthetics alone and more interested in relationships between the body and clothing between individuals and within chosen families. NATTAUP began as a way to exist in between desire vulnerability and control held in the same place. At first it was personal. Now it’s communal. What matters is how clothing supports the way people live connect and define intimacy on their own terms even when it doesn’t fit an existing category.

How do you balance creative expression with commercial viability when developing a new collection?

I don’t treat creativity and commerciality as opposites. For NATTAUP the most commercial pieces are often the ones with the clearest point of view because they’re designed to be lived in not just looked at.
My process starts with a feeling and a function. I ask what does this piece need to hold physically and emotionally. From there I build a system: a few core silhouettes that carry the season’s language then variations in material detail and styling that let the idea travel across price points and different wardrobes.
Commercial viability comes from discipline. We edit hard. We protect the essentials. We test wearability fit and repeat use until the garment earns its place. If a design can’t survive real life it doesn’t belong no matter how beautiful it is. And if a piece sells only because it’s loud it usually fades just as quickly.
So the balance is really about intention: keeping the brand’s charge support and desire restraint and intensity while making choices that respect production margin and the customer’s everyday rhythm. The goal is not to compromise the idea but to refine it until it feels inevitable.

Which materials techniques or cultural influences are central to your current work and why?

Right now NATTAUP is drawn to contradiction and complexity because people are never singular. We’re fascinated by materials and references that carry duality even multiplicity: softness with control exposure with protection lightness with structure.

For us the point isn’t to resolve these forces but to make them wearable and believable in everyday life. Two signatures sit at the center of our current language: mesh splicing and deconstructed construction and a high-flash custom-developed fabric created specifically for the brand. Mesh for us is never simply sheer. It’s a way to reveal and restrain at the same time to create breath precision and controlled placement against the body. Through splicing and deconstruction a garment becomes a map: lines interrupt seams shift and support appears where you least expect it. Mesh is also our clearest expression of night-time inspiration how the body feels after dark: softened sharpened and slightly untouchable.
The high-flash fabric works in another register almost electric yet controlled. It isn’t sparkle as decoration it’s light as sensation. We developed it to catch movement rather than attention letting the body flicker in and out of focus like emotion does. That contained intensity shine held by clean structure feels unmistakably NATTAUP.
From a technical point of view I’m focused on construction that behaves like an interface: modular elements detachable parts adjustable points and careful mapping of pressure and release. Culturally the work is anchored in an ongoing observation of human nature: complexity contradiction desire and restraint. The everyday becomes compelling when these states coexist quietly and precisely close to the skin.

Tell us about your rituals what anchors your process when everything else feels unstable?

What anchors the work are NATTAUP’s three constants: the night subverting the everyday through essentials and sustainability. Night gives me sensitivity an atmosphere closer to the body restrained yet sharp. Subverting the ordinary through daily pieces keeps me focused on what people actually wear and return to. Sustainability isn’t a slogan it’s a method: designing less and designing with precision so each piece can remain meaningful over time. When everything feels unstable I return to these three because they tell me what to edit what to protect and why the work must continue.

If a favorite garment of yours were a film a scent or a piece of music what would it be and why?

I find it hard to choose a single favorite garment because reducing it to one reference feels like the wrong kind of judgement. NATTAUP is built on complexity and opposition and I don’t think one piece can or should translate into a single symbol.
That’s why when we created fragrance we didn’t treat it as one signature. We released three perfumes using a dual-track approach two lines running in parallel to reflect the brand’s multiplicity: conflict and calm control and softness clarity and distortion. It’s less about defining identity and more about allowing opposing states to exist together.
If there’s one sense I can answer without hesitation it’s music. I genuinely love Massive Attack. Their sound feels slow shadowed and emotionally exact charged but never loud and it’s an atmosphere I return to again and again.