Maatroom
A subtle minimalism
Superzoom is on the lookout for interesting names on the Italian independent scene. Small-scale projects developed with care and love. To rediscover the real idea of contemporary, sustainable, welcoming and affectionate fashion.
For Maatroom it’s a way of redesigning contemporary fashion with a renewed, light sensitivity. Today Superzoom talks about the brand founded in Turin in 2016 by fashion designer Giulia Soldà, who manages this project on her own with wonderful care. Let’s start with a bit of etymology. As explained on its website and social media pages, the brand name is a blend of Maat, the ancient Egyptian concept of balance, order and harmony, and Room, understood as a space for thought and expression. The Turinese designer’s ‘order room’ takes shape in clothes that depict the end result of refined thinking, stripped of the outside world’s impurities, that have an air of calm, depth and immediacy.
As she writes in her presentations, “the apparent simplicity of understated shapes conceals profound conceptual elements”, but unlike a lot of hard-edged minimalism, Maatroom has plenty of warmth. The clothes can feature knots, swellings, wraparound details and softer lines. “Austere and fluid side by side,” reads another description. We sat down with Giulia Soldà and tried to unpick her thoughts on three contemporary key words that can rewrite fashion and be reflected in everyday life: space, place and time.
Maatroom is a word that evokes precise, coherent spaces. What relationship do you have with the territory?
Maatroom has strong ties with the place where it was conceived. It was set up in Turin, the city where I grew up and which I love. It’s full of Art Deco masterpieces and modern, industrial-style architecture. This harmony of opposites also appears in our stylistic vision, in which masculine and feminine, austere and soft, rigid and fluid, live side by side in unexpected balance. We chose to make the project entirely Made in Italy, based on a concept of “slow fashion”, so things take time to design and produce, which enables Maatroom pieces to fully respect the environment and the people that help make them. They are clothes designed to last.
Given that “sustainability” is a word that will shape the future of fashion, what is your project’s position on it?
Fortunately, everyone’s talking about sustainability these days, but it’s been clear for Maatroom since the outset that the project would only make sense if sustainability were applied across all production. For us, the sustainable path is the only solution that allows us to create collections that team dreams and consciousness. This type of vision is also reflected in our new online shop, which is designed like a museum: it will always host a permanent anthology collection (called Collection N°0) as well as the current, temporary one. Each piece on the online shop is made to order so that production can be managed responsibly.
We like to think that, beginning with the etymology of your name, the choice of place is fundamental. Is having your own studio and being completely in charge of distribution your way of reshaping fashion rituals?
Maatroom is a very personal project, it takes shape in a white-painted space with sunlight streaming through the windows. It’s an interesting process of discovering how a physical space can turn from an infinite series of combinations to a complete place. Being behind the distribution dynamics of fashion is very damaging for a brand like Maatroom. The risk is losing its identity in a bid to meet market demands. Our products are sold directly by us or by selected retailers who believe strongly in our project, so they can be presented in the right way. We are free to be proudly ourselves. A brand where details matter and every choice is well-considered. The focus is on quality, not quantity. We don’t follow seasonal trends and we don’t imitate things that already exist, but we do try to establish a sincere conversation with our audience. They are people, not just customers, and we need humanity, honesty and affection now more than ever.
Is establishing a relationship with your customers about building affiliation and shared values?
It’s a relationship based on shared values. The women who embrace the Maatroom universe support us and want to be part of its growth. We dedicate our work and our commitment to these women and we have recently introduced a high-value tailoring service set up with a few regular clients who are looking for something really personal. Every piece in our collections can be made to measure and customised with materials and details from different models. Customers can take inspiration from the images of all the Maatroom collections to choose the piece they want and design it together with us.
Is it possible to stay on the market whilst setting your own rules?
An independent brand like Maatroom needs to follow its own path, even with the knowledge of having to periodically deal with cultural and market changes. The goal has always been to “build”: from designing collections to choosing how we communicate; the main idea is that past projects retain value into the future.
Time. The feeling of calm and cleanness in your clothes conveys a sense of the classics, the universal and the always valid. How did you choose the names of the collections? Are they chapters in a coherent but multifaceted world?
Each collection is numbered in chronological order to disconnect it from the constraints of seasonality. The names have different origins: sometimes they give the main inspiration behind the collection, other times they are just a suggestion or an insight that comes up while shooting the campaign.