While it presents during men’s fashion week, and chore jackets and drawstring pants remain perennial bestsellers, Meta Campania Collective now does about 70 percent of its business with women’s.
Jon Strassburg, the designer and cofounder of the Paris-based label, surmised that he may be benefiting from the luxury fatigue bedeviling fashion’s mega brands; from his personal, no-compromise approach to fabrics and make, and Meta Campania’s nonchalant silhouettes and minimal branding.
“I select every fabric, I select every colorway, I do every silhouette,” he said. “There’s nobody else behind and I think you can feel it in the collection.”
No doubt it’s also love at first touch, given the sumptuous fabrics Strassburg employs, including a cloud-like cashmere-silk blend for shirt jackets, alpaca and camel hair for robe-like coats, and his signature wide-wale cord for trousers and jackets, now also cut for feminine appeal.
As usual, Strassburg installed the fall collection in his versatile Left Bank space, which functions as a studio, commercial showroom and occasional boutique, inviting his artist friends to model the collection and mingle with guests. (The brand’s guiding light is the effortlessly cool personal wardrobe of artists, and indeed these were the guests at the party you would wish to converse with.)
The mountains were a recurrent theme in Milan, and Strassburg said he took inspiration from the Grisons canton of Switzerland, where his parents met and where he spent many winters. Its furry and slightly frightening carnival masks inspired the hairy textures of some garments and accessories, and the organic feel to the colors and the easy, unlined silhouettes.
Strassburg also noted that the Grisons region, which contains Davos and Saint Moritz, has become very Meta Campania.
“It’s become a super hot spot for art and artists, so it made a lot of sense for me to bring these kind of worlds together,” he said.
