Australian designer Toni Maticevski’s autumn 2024 collection is a testament to his artistic process, where experimentation and intuition intertwine to create garments that are as much about texture as they are about the wearer’s identity. The collection is a vibrant exploration of past-season concepts, revisited and reinterpreted through a lens of playful exploration. Maticevski’s approach to design is often inspired by the unexpected. He describes a moment when he haphazardly tossed a piece of fabric onto a mannequin, only to discover that the accidental placement sparked a fresh perspective on his initial design. This realization led him to embrace intentional experimentation, flipping, rotating, and repositioning patterns to discover new possibilities within his designs.
This intuitive approach is a hallmark of Maticevski’s creative process. He refers to his garments as “moments” or “feelings,” suggesting a deeper emotional connection to his work. He often sets aside designs to allow them to simmer, continually developing and exploring different facets of his vision. The autumn 2024 collection is a culmination of this deliberate approach, showcasing the evolution of ideas across seasons.
The collection’s defining characteristic is its focus on textures and their interplay. Maticevski explores the way different fabrics respond to each other and how they can be enhanced by embellishments like ruffles, fringing, pearls, layers, and volumes. The result is a collection that is both technically sophisticated and visually cohesive. The six weeks it took to build the collection were marked by a frenzied energy, yet somehow yielded a harmonious aesthetic despite the abundance of materials and techniques employed.
Maticevski’s signature approach to design is evident in the collection’s dramatic flounces subtly lined with crinoline and pearls, and the fully sequined ensembles tailored close to the body. He describes his vision as creating “enhanced distortions in the silhouette,” where elements that protrude shape and minimize other parts of the garment, resulting in a dynamic play of volume and form. This is exemplified in the Cascading fringe gown, a piece that took years to realize and draws inspiration from a 1930s frock by French designer Madeleine Vionnet. “I wanted to see how I could interpret it and bring it to a modern woman,” Maticevski explains. “How to play on the contradiction of hard and soft, future and past.”
The autumn collection builds upon the delicate aesthetic of Maticevski’s pre-fall line, introducing a more defined and self-assured identity to the woman who wears his clothes. While the pre-fall woman was delicate, the autumn woman is steady, reflecting the duality of femininity. Maticevski’s designs are inherently multifaceted, mirroring the complexities of the women who wear them. He acknowledges the multi-dimensional nature of femininity, stating, “I love the idea that we’re all multi-dimensional, as are our tastes. 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.”
This concept of multi-dimensionality is reflected in the women who wear Maticevski’s designs, from pop star Taylor Swift in her Fortnight music video to award-winning broadcast journalist and UN Women PH Goodwill Ambassador Karen Davila. Davila, who wore a full Maticevski look for the cover of Vogue Philippines’ March 2024 issue, expressed her admiration for the designer on Instagram, stating, “I am such an admirer of your work […] such a thrill to wear you!” The names of Maticevski’s garments themselves speak to the qualities they embody: the Candescence gown on Swift, the Zest crop jacket on Davila.
The autumn line is a rich tapestry of values and vêtements: a Viable cape, Conviction skirt, Redeem pant, Ignite bomber jacket, Polite coat. These garments embody not only the qualities of a woman but also the essence of clothing that cloaks and reveals simultaneously. In Maticevski’s words, they “became almost like a living thing.”
