Earth Work: A Conversation with Claire Michel

Some stories unfold slowly, over linen scraps and childhood sketches. Others arrive all at once, like a sentence dropped at the right moment. Claire Michel’s has been both.

Raised in the French countryside among stuffed-sock horses and labradors, Claire always knew she would live a creative life. That instinct first took her to Paris to study fashion, then to Antwerp where the pace quickened and the pressure sharpened.  After graduating, she traded city streets for sea air, landing in Saint-Malo with a desire to sail and a need to make. What followed was OURKA—a linen-based label shaped by intuition, practicality, and deep aesthetic freedom. For six years she ran her business from a ten-square-metre studio, cutting fabric, hand-painting textiles, and building a following of loyal wearers who cherished the honesty of her work.

But slowness has many meanings. After seasons of beautiful, sustainable production—and the quiet questions that come with growth—Claire found herself back where she began: drawing horses. These days, OURKA lives on in illustration—still intimate, still handmade. We spoke with Claire about childhood restlessness, making without waste, and what it means to listen to the feeling before the form.

You grew up in the South West of France and now live and work in Saint‑Malo. How have these landscapes shaped your design sensibility and way of working?

I grew up on a small, family-owned tourist site in the middle of the French countryside, with my younger sister and my two independent parents. I’ve always seen them at work, helped them often, but mostly ran around playing in nature with our army of labradors, riding dashing horses made of stuffed socks on sticks.

I remember often being bored inside the house, where I would create large gift settings for my parents to discover—offering them an object of their own belongings. Their lack of surprise left me quite disappointed. So my main activity was drawing. I would produce plenty of drawings, mostly of horses, that I would offer to everyone I knew.

I never wanted a classic life. Since I was a toddler, I knew I needed to have an unconventional and creative path. And I’m so lucky I have it!

Saint-Malo, a charming harbour city I had never visited before moving there, was my choice right after my Antwerp studies, because I wanted to sail. With absolutely no experience in the matter - and mostly the urge to run away from the intense fashion studies I had just finished - I was dreaming of crossing oceans on a sailboat. No need to tell you I didn’t fall in love with the reality of it. Instead, I decided to create a business.

Image by Céline Delamaire

Your garments feel deeply grounded, textural, honest, and free from excess. Can you tell us about the materials you choose and the values behind those decisions?

Thank you. Freedom is my guide. First and most importantly, in the way you feel in the garment. Secondly, in my practical approach to a small business. For three years, alongside the shop in town, I worked in a ten-square-metre studio!

I organized pattern-making, cutting, painting on the fabric, and stitching in there.

I needed to create pieces that could cover two sizes, using every bit of material, without compromising anything I loved: colours, prints, and cuts. I knew I could explore all of it with one fabric, which is why I worked exclusively with linen - few suppliers, most sustainable, and best quality. Excluding plastic and metal, I found creative solutions in the pattern itself, finishing with hemp strings and ceramic buttons. I also had the help of a wonderful seamstress to complete production. Linen is the most beautiful natural material that exists - it does everything the body needs, and calls on historical elegance in every move.

I met amazing people, now my friends, who helped the label grow stronger. I felt so proud and happy running this business and shop for six years. I also felt free to rethink it when the “sparkle” disappeared and questions about how I really wanted to work started to kick in.

Image by Céline Delamaire

Much of Ourka seems to resist the urgency of fashion. What does slowness look like in your studio, both in process and in philosophy?

Your question introduces the next chapter. OURKA has always been a slow label. So the question often popped up: why make more garments? Especially when discouragement is at every corner, looking at fast fashion and uncaring labels. After six years of developing my label’s style and identity, in direct relationship with my customers, I could feel a shift in them. I could also feel a change inside of me. It sounds corny, but I needed to get back to that child, the one drawing horses.

Slowness is, sometimes, knowing when to stop.

Can you walk us through the making of a recent piece, from idea to final stitch? What guided your hand along the way?

Strong from the shop experience, I knew I wanted to get rid of what had become the heaviest: stock, sizing, labor, premises, and transport.

Back to drawing horses! That’s precisely what I was doing in early 2024, when my partner helped me shift. He always does, dropping the sentence that changes everything. It took me a year to think about this new direction, while still running the shop. And since May 2025, I’ve officially become an illustrator.

I’m drawing more than horses, of course, still within the fields of fashion, beauty, and design, which I deeply love and studied for many years.

I think I’ve found a way to sustain my love for fashion without feeding the beast of garment production.

How do you navigate sustainability in a time when fashion is often driven by overproduction and disposability? What boundaries or choices help you stay true to your values?

That’s precisely how I now feel more aligned with sustainability. The material is reduced to its core, it simply needs my ideas, hands, and time. I can digitally send my work anywhere in the world, working in sync with clients. It’s like made-to-measure for a digital service. It’s still in progress, but I’ve learned that a creative lifestyle always is, like a never-ending development.

Writing this makes me very happy. It feels… free. It took me six years, a shop, a lot of material orders and production to finally see the richness of just being my most natural self: drawing for others. But I couldn’t have arrived there without this amazing experience and the community I found during that time, that’s the beauty of it.

Image by Céline Delamaire

When someone wears Ourka, what do you hope they feel, not just physically, but emotionally or energetically?

My customers always told me they felt comfortable and spoiled in my designs. I cherish those testimonials so much.

Now, OURKA is worn, looked at, and hopefully contacted more and more for illustration commissions.

We know images have power over our feelings, and I hope my drawings speak to our hearts and minds, bringing joy, empowerment, love of nature, and authenticity.

And, of course, a strong sense of freedom. 

Follow Claire's work or view her illustrations. 

Article has been translated to French by Claire, read here.