Born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Catherine Edouard Charlot designed her first Tote from a long forgotten umbrella found in the bottom of her closet in 2004. Taught herself to sew at the age of 13 by using her dad old shirt and constructed a dress. Throughout out the years, she then started The Lion Art Craft in Haiti focusing on her native art; reusing old metal drums to design art pieces.
Catherine has experienced success with clients from afar as The Netherlands. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1994 and undertook studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) to complement her degree from Haiti's Verona Alta Costura School of Fashion.
She founded HIMANE Clothing Designs in 1998, name the business after her mother who passed away suddenly in 2006, while still working in the Medical field as a Claim Examiner. The company at that time was mainly a home-based business producing custom-designed wedding dresses. In 2006 she launched HIMANE focusing mainly on pattern and sample making, recycling discarded umbrella into handbags, Jackets, little black cocktail dresses and repurposing old clothes into one-of-a-kind dresses.
In 2011, she shifted the company name around to be HIMANE SUSTAINABLE DESIGNS.
The characteristic that guide Catherine's work is that it be creative, innovative, classy, earthy, well crafted, one-of-a-kind and locally made. The primary materials used in her handbag production are "retired" umbrellas.
Aside from making great products, Catherine have two goals dear to her heart: one goal is to create awareness and appreciation of what can be done with discarded materials and second is to build a sustainable school for the youth of her home country. Not limiting herself to just "retired" umbrellas, she also walks around the local factories, designer studio to repurpose other materials. She works with denim, leather, fish skin and certified organic materials.
The recycled items are washed, deconstructed, re-cut and completely transformed into new designs. Giving an object new form and new purpose honors its previous life, extend its story, adds a whole new deeper layer of value to the item and is what makes the designer work worthwhile and always interesting.
The beautiful aspect about upcycling an item is the fact that the item had a whole past life before it landed in Catherine's studio. Each item is unique, one-of-a-kind, have a sense of history, but yet still very new. A focus and belief in individuality means that no two garments are ever exactly the same, a design concept which led The NY Daily News to describe HIMANE as "High Fashion street couture".
Available for Meetings, Worskhops & Seminars.
Committed to helping our customers see their retired items with a new eye. Our landfills need to go in a unique diet, let's do it together!
