For more than 35 years, Nelly Saunier has devoted her artistic talent to the art of featherwork. She was fourteen when she first discovered feathers and their infinite possibilities. Having found her calling, she trained in featherwork techniques at the Lycée Octave Feuillet and later expanded her education by studying textile design at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art Olivier de Serres.

At the beginning of her career, Nelly Saunier collaborated with numerous renowned haute couture houses such as Chanel, Givenchy, Nina Ricci, Isabelle Marant, Louboutin, and Jean-Paul Gaultier—working with the latter for seventeen years—creating unique and spectacular pieces. She has also worked with leading designers, created costumes for cinema, and more recently crafted exceptional and infinitely delicate pieces for prestigious high jewelry and fine watchmaking houses, including Harry Winston, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chopard, Hennessy, Hermès, and Piaget.

In her Paris studio, she continually experiments, virtuously transcending an ancestral craft to achieve unexpected sculptural effects. Nelly Saunier delights in endlessly transforming nature, as exemplified by her Nature Transformée® series—illusory flowers fashioned from feathers. Her works explore texture and the infinite richness of feathers through trompe-l’œil, illusion, and metamorphosis.

Her feather sculptures have been exhibited in museums and contemporary art venues in France and abroad, including the MAD (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), Palais de Tokyo, Musée du Quai Branly, Philharmonie de Paris, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, the National Museum of Tokyo, and the National Museum of China in Beijing.

Appointed Maître d’Art in 2008, recipient of the Prix Liliane Bettencourt for the Intelligence of the Hand in 2009, and laureate of the Villa Kujoyama program in 2015, she was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2020 and appointed to the National Order of Merit by the Grand Chancellery of the Légion d’Honneur in 2025.