Alabama Chanin

About Rinne Allen

Long-time Natalie Chanin collaborator Rinne Allen is a photographer working in color, black & white, and alternative photo-processing. After studying photography and art in Tennessee, she traveled around the world, lived in Paris, and now resides in her hometown of Athens, Georgia.

Rinne has, for the last 20 years, worked as both a commercial and fine art photographer. In addition to having a long-running series on harvests in the New York Times T Magazine. She has collaborated with many artisans and chefs over the years, documenting their work and their process, and also photographed many books. In 2012, her book with chef Hugh Acheson, A New Turn in the South, won the James Beard award for Best Cookbook in the field of "American Cooking", and her book, Citizen Farmers, made with farmer Daron Joffe won the 2015 IACP award for Food Matters.

About Natalie Chanin

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Works by Natalie Chanin

Natalie “Alabama” Chanin is a celebrated textile artist and designer, who blends story, place, craft and design to create evocative, beautiful works that stir the eye and the heart.

Florence, Alabama-based Natalie is also the co-founder/creative force behind Alabama Chanin "family” of companies that works together to create a collaborative community exchanging ideas geared towards sustaining heritage, community, and environment.The family includes: The School of Making, The Factory Store + Café, Building 14 Design + Manufacturing Services and the Alabama Chanin collection of exquisitely designed and crafted clothing.

After graduating from North Carolina State University with a degree in Environmental Design, Natalie worked in the junior

sportswear industry on New York’s Seventh Avenue before moving abroad, travelling the globe for over a decade working as a stylist and costume designer. When she returned home to Alabama in 2000, she began to work on what has become Alabama Chanin.

In 2013, Chanin won the CFDA/Lexus Eco-Fashion Challenge, an award competition that identifies and celebrates the greatest American designers working in the realm of sustainable fashion. She continues to learn and to teach craft traditions, using them to bridge generational, economic, and cultural gaps. As a mother of two, an avid gardener, and an enthusiastic cook, Natalie continues to stitch her own path with a needle and thread. 

Past Exhibition

Alabama On Alabama

Alabama on Alabama is a month-long journey to the soul of the modern South, held in the Boiler Room and showroom at Heath SF. Refined, raw and radical, the modern South connects place, people, process, and tradition in a way that cuts across geography and time.

The show features one-of-a-kind work by Natalie Chanin along with surprising, provocative work by Butch Anthony, photography and light paintings by Rinne Allen, and works on paper by outsider artist Mr. John Henry Toney. It kicks off with a Southern-themed opening celebration; a trunk show hosted by Natalie Chanin featuring Alabama Chanin’s one-of-a-kind items; a special talk and workshop featuring long-time friends and collaborators Natalie and Catherine Bailey, owner and Creative Director at Heath; and a talk and slideshow chronicling southern culture by Rinne Allen.

Delve deep into the soul of the South (without the heat or humidity).