It’s shaping up as a very tactile menswear season, and Meta Campania Collective has plenty to please the fingers, including cashmere puffers, plaid shirts and denim-look worker jackets in cotton cashmere, plus robe-like coats in winter silk, which feels like nothing else.
French musician Joseph Schiano di Lombo put his fingers, gently, on the ivories at the brand’s low-key presentation in a Paris gallery, bits of moss and tall grasses placed here and there to evoke the Cotswolds — the backdrop for the arty, documentary-style look book shoot — and the British inspiration.
Designer and Meta Campania cofounder Jon Strassburg, who is half-German, half-English, happened upon a family snapshot of him with his parents and his British grandmother, all wearing typical English fabrics and patterns, though probably not at the level of luxury achieved here.
Whether he’s using wide-wale corduroy, Donegal tweed or Shetland wool, Strassburg sticks to contemporary silhouettes like drawstring pants, shirt jackets and blousons — reflecting his obsession with the individual style of fine artists of yore and of today, including his buddies Alice Heart and Samuel Fasse, who regularly moonlight as showroom models for him.
“The pieces are either unisex or women’s,” Strassburg said, nodding to a slip dress in crushed velvet worn by yet another artist friend as an example of the latter.
The brand is also slowly expanding its handbag range, introducing a top-handled frame style in calf leather with the corners and closure elements gently padded with goose down. It also felt like nothing else.
