If there were ever a case for learning outside of the traditional classroom, it’s Natia, a dark beauty whose life reads like one of the many classic pieces of literature that she is an expert in. While I am trying to figure out how to keep this passage down to one paragraph, I have windows open to all of her routine references: Proust, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Baudelaire and her favorite of all, The Master and Margarita (for its dreamlike kindness and devils) by Bulgakov, someone I have never heard of but is now on top of my huge stack of books on my bedside table. I also made an immediate dash to the All Saints site once she extolled their aesthetic virtues – Natia’s obsessed with every leather piece. She studied ballet beginning at eight years old, far from her home of the Republic of Georgia, as in succeeded from Russia in 2003, where she lived through the revolution and remembers being cold in a big house with memories of her family huddled around the one oil heater and where “there was no food at all.” Her dance teacher had escaped the Ramonovs and was given her school by Grace Kelly (this is too fascinating a tidbit to leave out). At thirteen years old, she moved to Paris, where she met people like Jean Paul Gaultier and modeled. Natia switched to acting when she came to New York and though she is classically trained, trusts her instincts more than “a method,” as she does with her style. Her mother is a big fashion influence in her life: “She could wear a skirt down to her ankles with a sweatshirt and gloves…she gets a lot of attention.” Natia buys herself a lot of the basics, like Rag & Bone and vintage band tees and mixes the more dramatic pieces in, many of which are hand-me-downs from her mom, like her crocheted Gaultier cardigan. Most things are given a street-rocker edge by Natia, like her prim Viktor & Rolf blouse and Margiela blazer. She embraces her love and the influence of Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, but Natia does it very much in her highly cultivated way of a “boyish punk chic” with a touch of theater and romance, and always with a certain not “in your face” simplicity.

To learn more about Natia, click on the detailed captions page.