Ignite leather bomber and Inordinary skirt. Photographs courtesy of Maticevski
A look at the autumn 2024 collection of Australian designer Toni Maticevski, whose sculptural garments are worn by the likes of pop star Taylor Swift and Vogue Philippines March 2024 cover star Karen Davila.
“Often,” says Australian designer Toni Maticevski, “it might be an accidental landing of a fabric against another that can trigger an enhancement of the idea.”
He paints a picture: when he was clearing out the floor of his studio so he could vacuum, he picked up a panel of fabric and haphazardly threw it on a mannequin. The way it landed, he later discovered, made him realize that what he had initially designed made sense in another context. He began to carry out the practice intentionally, flipping or rotating a single pattern, or moving it from the shoulder to the hip. The possibilities were endless to begin with, yet somehow, they continued to grow.
Intuitive experimentation is standard creative procedure for Toni, who works on all of Maticevski’s pieces himself. He fondly refers to clothes as “moments” or “feelings,” explaining that he’ll set a look aside to let it simmer while he continues “to develop and explore other moments.” Other times, “some pieces sit on the stand for weeks and are like a reminder to me to stick to a particular feeling.”
A merging of the two is precisely how he approached his autumn 2024 collection, in which the pieces bloom from some past-season concepts that are ever-evolving in his head. Fabrications more prominently set the tone; Toni focused on textures and the way a certain piece of cloth responds to another, or how it might respond to embellishments like ruffles, fringing, pearls, layers, and volumes. The six weeks it took to build the collection were a state of frenzied play, but one that somehow yielded visual cohesion despite a technical and material abundance.
Drawn to tension in design, Toni’s garments push and pull like a dramatic flounce subtly lined with crinoline and pearls, or fully sequined ensembles tailored close to the body. He loves the idea of “creating enhanced distortions in the silhouette,” and “how some things that protrude can shape and minimize other parts of it.” He points out their Cascading fringe gown that took years to realize, one that references a 1930s frock by French designer Madeleine Vionnet. “I wanted to see how I could interpret it and bring it to a modern woman. How to play on the contradiction of hard and soft, future and past.”
Crafting garments that swirl, shine, and cinch, the autumn collection continues the design story of their pre-fall release with a more defined and self-assured identity. If Maticevski’s pre-fall woman is delicate, their autumn woman is steady, alluding to the duality of femininity. “I love the idea that we’re all multi-dimensional, as are our tastes,” Toni says. “We change what we eat and where we live and travel, so it’s only obvious that our mood and our sense of ourselves shifts. And clothes enhance that. So, each season brings a different mood and pretext, a layer of our multi-personality.”
These multiplicities reflect in the kind of women that don his clothes, from pop star Taylor Swift in her Fortnight music video to award-winning broadcast journalist and UN Women PH Goodwill Ambassador Karen Davila. The latter, who was dressed in a full Maticevski look for the cover of Vogue Philippines’ March 2024 issue, wrote to Toni on Instagram, “I am such an admirer of your work […] such a thrill to wear you!”
The two are swathed in clothes named after admirable qualities that they happen to embody: the Candescence gown on Swift, the Zest crop jacket on Davila. Maticevski’s autumn line carries more values and vêtements: a Viable cape, Conviction skirt, Redeem pant. Ignite bomber jacket. Polite coat. Qualities of a woman, yes, but also of garments that clothe as much as they reveal. Garbs that, in Toni’s words, “became almost like a living thing.”
