MALEEN NÖKEL
Already as a young child Maleen had been drawn to observing people, fascinated by the story they could tell by the way they dressed and behaved picturing their personalities and was intrigued by other cultures and ethnics during the many travels and moves with her family.
Growing up to a teenager her treasured companion was her diary that she filled with sketches and comments. And, her favourite game, when finding herself among crowds, was to look at other
people’s feet and drawing them as she imagined they would look like.
Graduated with a Bachelor Degree for Costume Design at the art academy HDK in Berlin, Maleen started her early career in the film industry as costume design assistant on period movies in Germany, Der Schimmelreiter, and Poland, The Tindrum by Volker Schlöndorff.
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Her collaboration on the Costume Exhibition with the costumes for the Russian Ballets by Serge Diaghilev and Leon Bakst at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened her the doors to the theatre world in Paris. She moved to Paris where she began designing costumes for a small theatre TEP and following to this for the state theatres Théâtre de L’Odeon and La Comédie-Française, and for operas at the Teatro Romano di Verona in Italy and the state opera in Strasbourg Opéra du Rhin.
Opéra national du Rhin, Strasbourg, France
While practicing her profession as costume designer, Maleen filled her leisure time with art works, received opportunities of publications such as fashion illustrations for magazines Mode Avantgarde or Figaro Madame and book illustrations for Edition Fillipacci; thus became member of La Maison des Artistes and had her artworks exposed on art exhibitions in Paris. This further led to design contracts with Parisian Haute Couture Houses, NINA RICCI in particular when expanding to launching its prestige distribution in Japan and opening its boutique for men apparels Avenue Montaigne.
She wrote analytic reports about up-coming trends for Comité Colbert, designed for fashion apparels, accessory lines as well as table and homewear as well. In 1992 she was approached by finance company Participation & Franchises allowing her to challenge the realization of a dream she had, to create ‘living scented paintings’ meaning having her paintings of roses printed on silk and have them micro-encapsulated with perfume making the scarf exude an everlasting scent, a Japanese invented intricate technic.
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Even though turning out to be seemingly an impossible adventure, it took two years of persistence and succeeded thanks to the grateful support of Jean Louis Dumas, CEO of Hermes and Jean-François Laporte, famous for his floral perfume creations, who created the rose perfume for the micro-encapsulation. The launch at fashion fairs ENK in New York and Premiere Classe in Paris drew significant attention and boutique product sales were successful. Yet her passion for costume designing triumphed over a business venture Maleen was not inclined to step in. She rather preferred to accept parallel design offers earing her royalties and signed a design contract with KEN TOBA INC for Hanku department stores for which she designed swimwear based on innovative materials and methods.
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Creating living characters, the adrenaline driven elaboration for its plays up until to tears moving opening nights has been a passion she never imagined being able to live without, and if anything else she desired pursuing, it was designing costumes for motion pictures.
She received a fascinating project offer for the documentary, Le Temps des Templiers, presented her costume design treatment and designs, and received the costume designer position for its production.
Consequently she obtained costume designer contracts for divers other film productions. She became renowned costume designer with the movie Wake of Death directed by Philippe Martinez, has become an internationally accredited costume designer for movies, TV-series, documentaries of all genre and at the same time has a contract with YES Music in Switzerland designing costumes and art directing for musical dance tour concerts.
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Maleen is fascinated by the always new and different projects, visualising and documenting them, bringing them to realization and share the fruits with passionate collaborators. She loves challenges, loves to surprise others and herself by the successful outcome, the magic it withholds and the resulting of every time another footprint tracing the path of history from past, present and future.
