THE WOMAN BEHIND MAISON MÉTISSE

Adrienne Charuel is the founder and designer of Maison Métisse, a French-Philippine living atelier exploring contemporary haute craft.

Her formation began in Paris, where she studied fashion design at ESMOD, learning to approach fashion through its history, the discipline of the atelier, the savoir-faire of its makers, and the relationship between proportion, construction and material — a lineage of making.

Her practice gradually moved beyond the garment.

She went on to study weaving in New York, then deepened her understanding of the loom through aizome and Japanese weaving under a Japanese master, where she encountered a relationship to craft grounded in patience, discipline and reverence for material and process.

Japan changed not only how she worked, but how she understood making.

The loom became more than a tool.
The textile became more than a surface.

Making demanded attention.

The more she learned about textiles, the more the material itself became the starting point. Rather than designing a form and selecting a textile to realise it, Adrienne became interested in what could happen when material, technique and form are developed together.

Today, she works directly with the loom, developing textiles and garments through an ongoing exploration of colour, structure, fibre and form.

These explorations have evolved into Maison Métisse's own systems of making, including Habi-Couture, where the garment is conceived directly on the loom.

Returning to the Philippines brought this practice into a different material and cultural landscape, surrounded by its fibres, textile knowledge and makers.

Her French background, Filipino environment and formation in Japanese weaving are not treated as a formula, but as experiences through which she has learned to look, make and question.

Always a student. Never a master.

For Adrienne, making is not simply the execution of an idea.

It is part of the thinking itself.