About Lili Navarro-Wilson & Chaise Noir
My journey into becoming an upholsteress and craftswoman was full of twists and turns but also felt very destined. Born with a creative soul, collage was my favorite medium of art to explore, utilizing existing images from magazines to create a composition that was entirely new. I’ve always loved creating and manipulating my spatial environment, which made the pursuit of being an interior designer unquestionable in my teenage mind. Interior design was like spatial collage and full of fascinating materials to work with. I truly believe that the spaces we live in and the things we surround ourselves with have a strong impact on our psyche and quality of life.
I attended the School of Architecture at UTSA my first year in college before moving to San Francisco and the California College of the Arts in pursuit of a degree. This transition proved to be challenging for me and after a couple years, I took a leave of absence from school. My intention to gain more real-world experience landed me a position as a Design Assistant in a very high-end design firm in San Francisco. The opulence of the clientele and the exposure to high-end craftsmanship, materials, and design was exhilarating, as well as difficult to reconcile with my humble middle-class upbringing. This dichotomy is ever-present in my current work and taste but at the time, the feelings of not quite fitting in and uncertainty in life left me lost without direction. There was a background theme at play in my life…throughout my teens to mid-20’s, I struggled with drug use as a coping mechanism for the overwhelm of life and what I now understand is a sensory processing sensitivity, a trait known as Highly Sensitive Person (you can read more about this here). This was a confusing time for me because I had goals and opportunities but things were not clicking between my internal world and the exterior world. This experience, more often than not, left me in a dark, depressed place, eventually just surviving as a “functional” heroin addict. Something had to give.
I cleaned up a bit on my own and moved back to Austin in January of 2009, closer to home but aimless. The financial crisis of our economy at the time was not supportive with the luxury of the interior design industry and I didn’t know how to fit back into that world. I went back to school to finish an associates degree in Psychology, continuing to infuse the psychology of design, our spatial environment, and the senses in my course work. Still feeling lost. During this time in 2011, I overdosed on heroin, exposing a side of myself that had largely been hidden and compartmentalized. The events that followed drastically altered the course of my life and the years of self-discovery that followed. After a couple years spent in rehab, sober living, and the Travis County Drug Court program, I had a chance to change and set out to find a livelihood that resonated with my passions. This led me to take an upholstery course in 2013 that sparked a true sense of purpose and a journey back into the interior design world as a creator, maker, and craftswoman. It was love at first staple.
As an avid recycler with an eco-conscious mind, I set out to learn the trade of upholstery, working at a couple shops around town, nurturing a comprehensive skill-set that can marry the values of waste-reduction, creative self-expression, and functional design. Furniture is at the intersection of all my interests. It’s a reference to history, it holds stories about our culture, it’s a direct correlation to our bodies and how we move and function in a space, a support for our daily lives, and a way to self-express in our spaces. It has multiple lives and can be adapted to our needs with both structure and life-flow in the grand scheme of things. Chaise Noir was founded to be the embodiment and voice of these concepts by reviving discarded pieces - deemed beyond repair, left for trash, or abandoned by the loss of their loved ones. The importance of second-chances, breaking down stigma, and not judging a book by it’s cover is deeply personal for me and inspires me to look at old or overlooked furniture this way, giving it a chance to reclaim full potential. The studio is like a halfway house where vintage and antiques, down on their luck, can be nurtured and brought back to life before continuing on to their new homes and inspired spaces.
We all have stories. People are multi-faceted, layered, and complex but so are the objects and items they create. Furniture is designed to support our lives and can be just as layered and complex as we are. With love and care, I consider all the parts of a piece of furniture building back a solid foundation with reverence and dressing them to be confident in their form and function. Their stories continue on from the precipice of a potential ending, new life emerges. Inspiration comes from slow design, details, life cycles, the structure and organic flow of nature, and the soul imbued into a piece by hand craftsmanship