MILAN — At first glance, the new Mlouye store here appears to be more like an exhibition space rather than a shop, with its narrow glass door offering a glimpse of the essential, optical white space inside.
The sleek interior and its geometric lines mirror the sculptural designs that catapulted the Turkish indie accessories label into the hands of Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid and Sara Sampaio, to name a few. In finding its first physical home in Milan’s Via Gesù, Mlouye makes for a rare case of a contemporary brand settling in the tony fashion street, next to luxury players such as Goyard, Acqua di Parma, Cartier, Thom Browne and the Four Seasons Hotel.
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Yet for founder and creative director Meb Rure, it couldn’t have been any different: Milan had to be the city kicking off the brand’s new chapter marked by a retail expansion, not only due to its influential role in fashion but also in design. This duality is encoded in Rure’s own career and Mlouye’s ethos, since the founder has a background in industrial design that informs the brand she launched in 2015.
“After graduation I worked as a freelancer on projects like packaging, furniture, household appliances and so on. Then I wanted to follow my passion at some point and started to design handbags.…And I think there are two reasons for that: first, I’m a ‘bag-aholic.’ Second, as industrial designers we are trained to create objects, and while ready-to-wear is a totally different thing, handbags are quite close to that,” said Rure, whose rationalist vision takes inspiration from the Bauhaus movement.
Even switching fields, Rure’s mindset remained unvaried. “In industrial design you are trained to work for the user. A good design in our discipline should be useful, functional and long-lasting, in addition to aesthetically [pleasing].…Fashion designers work differently from us as their first focus is the aesthetic,” she noted. Balancing the utilitarian aspect with the image represents the key challenge of her work, as Rure underscored that “sometimes functional can be perceived as boring or not very attractive.”
To overturn this misconception, the founder and her team of artisans in Turkey craft Mlouye’s leather pieces, playing with colors and inventive yet practical shapes. Highlights in the collection include the Sera totes in different sizes, all coming with an accordion-like construction emphasized by multicolored strips of leather; the Studio Hobo shoulder bag with its sleek and graphic silhouette embellished by a rectangular detail in acetate on the handle, and the fun Helix bucket with its swirling design amplifying the rounded shape. Most recently, the brand introduced the Harley style, a multipurpose handbag with a reversible flap structure and four large pockets, which can be also worn on the shoulder or crossbody.
To further spotlight the colors and geometric construction of the accessories, the Milanese store was conceived as a white canvas with minimal furniture. The facade respects the graphic lines of the bags, with the store’s main window featuring a pleated panel and spotlighting a single design per month.
Inside, the compact space features a design bench by Nendo for Desalto that counterpoints an entire wall dedicated to displaying all designs, some of which are exclusive to the location.
“We wanted to create like a cloud or an art museum, a space where the products can pop up. We didn’t want them to be lost within the store,” said Rure, revealing that the opening process was a year in the making.
Bags’ prices range from $375 to $615, but the brand also offers small leather goods retailing for between $199 and $215 and a selection of footwear priced between $385 and $645, which reprise Mlouye’s signature pleated motifs in the heels of mules and boots. Rure’s goal is to further boast these categories and introduce jewelry in the assortment. Special projects in design are also in the pipeline for next year, when the company plans to open two additional stores in Istanbul and Paris.
A digital-native brand, Mlouye has a solid North American and Asian customer base — especially those from Korea — built through its online store, which is still its strongest distribution channel. The brand gradually added a brick-and-mortar distribution by partnering with key retailers, including La Samaritaine in Paris, Rinascente in Italy, Globus in Switzerland, Galeries Lafayette and Harvey Nichols in Asia and the Middle East, among others.
“Actually, people don’t know Mlouye in Turkey. We started as an online, direct-to-consumer brand and our target audience has been always the United States,” said Rure. “We didn’t give much importance [to Turkey] until now, but things will change and we’re going to be more present. It’s another market to discover.”
To mark its commitment to its homeland, earlier this year the company invested in setting up a grand production facility in Istanbul to manufacture all bags in-house. The footwear collection will continue to be produced by a family-owned manufacturer in Italy.
“Most of the brands in our size prefer to invest more in advertising, but we were at a turning point in which the demand was growing and we decided to do something. We could have chosen to invest more aggressively in marketing, but we opted to increase the quality of our products even more,” said Rure.
One of the founder’s main missions is to ensure that her creations are long-lasting, as she believes that longevity is the purest form of sustainability. The 16,000-square-foot center enables her to better control this process by monitoring all aspects behind the design and production of the accessories, including material sourcing and traceability, reduction of waste as well as social sustainability by guaranteeing optimal conditions for her team of artisans.
For one, leftover leather is being repurposed in the creation of new styles to help minimize the impact on the environment, as seen in the Sera family of bags, which is the result of an upcycling project.
On the creative front, handling all steps directly empowers Rure and her team to experiment and execute new techniques and solutions more freely compared to depending on third-party manufacturers. In addition, the in-house facility ensures that local artisans’ craftsmanship and artistry is being preserved and handed down to the next generation.
“We started our journey with three artisans and now we have 42. They develop our products, they teach younger generations how to make handbags, but we also merge technology in our production, which is quite new for Turkey,” said Rure.