In June, Toni Maticevski is sitting in an apartment in Paris – high-ceilinged and grand in a classic Haussmannian building in the city’s elegant 16th arrondissement. The apartment is just down the road from the Arc de Triomphe – a long way from Seddon in Melbourne’s west, where the fashion designer grew up. Riding the ancient elevator to the third floor, before our interview begins, we joke that it looks and feels like a confessional booth.

Maticevski is plainly dressed in a dark T-shirt, pants and sneakers. He’s here for the European summer, holding a showroom to present his resort collection to media, buyers and stylists. In years past, he’s shown his collections on the runway at Paris Fashion Week – a rare feat. These days, both at home and overseas, Maticevski does more showrooms than runways. He heads to Paris annually; international markets make up most of his customer base.

“I really want to break into Europe,” he told the Age in 2002, when he was just 24 and his label was three years old. “There is a real market for couture designers over there. I’d like to become a global name.”

When I ask if he thinks he’s achieved that, he replies with humility and consideration: “I think so. I always think of my brand as the quiet name that everyone knows of but isn’t the one that’s always first spoken of. I like the myth that’s being created around it.”

In some respects, that’s true. Though his label is one of Australia’s most revered, Maticevski is famously elusive. He doesn’t court the media, and rarely gives interviews. In a 2016 Broadsheet article, the author wrote that “very few people know what he looks like”.

In person, Maticevski is sharp, candid, warm and cheeky. Although we’ve never met before, he makes me feel as if we have. It’s a self-assuredness that’s felt profoundly in his boundary-pushing designs, with their whimsical, dramatic forms and precision tailoring.

Maticevski was in his early twenties when he entered the fashion industry; he’s now in his late forties, and he finds himself at something of a crossroads. Since 1999, he’s been able to navigate changes in the industry and consumer tastes, successfully pivoting where and when he needed to “stay relevant”.

“Once you’ve pivoted so far into the web, you’re like, ‘Where was our direction?’” he says. It’s the “headfuckery that comes with running a business”.

These are the interior dialogues of a man who for all intents and purposes has sustained a clear-eyed, alluring vision, designing womenswear that grows bolder and more assured as the years go by.

He suggests this self-examination is a hangover of Covid, when he watched friends change careers and reevaluate their life paths. Currently, he releases five collections a year – but that volume might change. “The scale and the constant momentum of output feels more mechanical than I remember,” he says.

For his next chapter, Maticevski is spring cleaning.

“[I] gotta do some hedge trimming and replanting [and] find what that new direction is for the brand,” he says. What that looks like is “still not really clear” to him, but the intent behind it is.

“The kind of formula that we’re all following is not really a sustainable one,” he says. “Even for these luxury houses, they churn through creatives … Someone who is brilliant and talented is disposed of or forgotten or erased. When people ask me, ‘Do you want to work for another big house?’ I’m like, ‘Not really, it doesn’t really sit well with me.’”

“I hate playing that party,” he says of the fast-paced flurry of the fashion industry. “I’d rather go fishing.”

A constant is Maticevski’s design process. “I’m still very hands-on. I design, I make the samples, I make the patterns,” he says. “It’s the part of my job that I love the most because it’s the only time I get to really be creative.”

It’s a process that has worked for 26 years, turning out sculptural, gravity-defying creations that are critically acclaimed and perfect for the red carpet (see Sandra Oh, Florence Pugh, Keke Palmer and Reese Witherspoon), as well as the odd Taylor Swift music video.

Movement, or the impression of it, has always been a staple of Maticevski’s pieces. He plays skilfully with draping and tailoring, often complementing or contradicting the female form. In an era where quiet luxury is dominant, Maticevski refuses to be silent.

I ask how he conceives such otherworldly designs, and his answer is surprising. “It might not be as magical as [you think]. It’s not very Galliano, I’m [not always] building a narrative and creating a story,” he says.

He begins with a mood, then extrapolates that mood out to fabrics, colours and textures. Then, he’ll “pilfer through 20 years of sketchbooks”.

Other times, he’ll be pulling fabric off the floor and throwing it on a mannequin to vacuum. “All of a sudden it lands in a way where I think, ‘Actually, that’s kind of cool’. And then that stems an idea.”

Maticevski has been manufacturing in Yarraville, in Melbourne’s west, since his label’s inception. He still produces 95 per cent of his garments out of that factory (embroidery and leather goods are manufactured off-shore). “My offices are still in the west, it’s just around the corner from where I grew up … It’s very yuppie now,” he says with a laugh.

“I’ve been lucky that the people that I’ve been working with are the same … for the last 15 or so years,” he says. He’s determined to keep manufacturing as much locally as possible. He believes growing a fashion label far from the world’s big fashion capitals helps carve out a unique brand identity. He points to industry peers like Christopher Esber and Dion Lee whose creations have cut through and achieved international success. “Being in Australia creates distance, which means that it’s difficult to then settle into the mechanics of [the fashion] cycle and system.”

Does he buy into the idea that Australian creatives must succeed overseas before they’re taken seriously at home? A resounding no. “It’s boring. It’s so shallow,” he says.

“I’ve established myself on my own terms,” he says, and the ability to stay loyal to himself is what he’s proudest of, after all this time. “I’ve met a lot of people along the way that have said, ‘You shouldn’t be doing this’ or ‘It doesn’t make sense’ or ‘Your business shouldn’t even exist’. I just believed in what I needed to do, because I needed to do it.”

Now, approaching three decades in business, Maticesvki has learnt not to be afraid of change. This week, he announced the launch of a new personal photography project called “The Way I See You”. The initial release – 500 books – feature seven years’ worth of intimate portraits by Maticevski of the male form. It’s bold and different to the public image Maticesvki has crafted. Because of that, he’s excited. He has a photographic memory, and can pinpoint pivotal moments in the life of his brand that were particularly ripe for renewal and rediscovery – for himself as well as for his audience.

“I feel like that is the way to hit 30 or more,” he says. “For me, it is about rediscovering something else in why I’m doing it, not just because I’m able to. That keeps me doing it.”

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