Why Ethical Luxury Label Maiyet is Pivoting to a ‘Collective’ Model

If you walked into the Maiyet shop in Soho a year ago, you might’ve enjoyed run­ning your hands over racks full of well-tai­lored coats or but­tery leather bags from the eth­i­cal lux­u­ry brand. Enter the recent­ly ren­o­vat­ed space today and the expe­ri­ence is very much the same, save for one thing: the design­er pieces in the space no longer all bear the same logo.

As of this week, Maiyet’s store­front is now func­tion­ing as the “Maiyet Col­lec­tive,” an eth­i­cal con­cept shop stock­ing brands curat­ed by the Maiyet team, with the label’s own pieces serv­ing as the cornerstones.

“We had this feel­ing that the orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple of eth­i­cal fash­ion com­bined com­mu­ni­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion, and there is some­thing mag­i­cal about that,” Maiyet Founder and CEO Paul van Zyl told Fash­ion­ista over the phone. “It has­n’t been so much a con­scious deci­sion as a con­tin­u­a­tion of a trend that we think is hap­pen­ing, which is that brands do well when they col­lab­o­rate and peo­ple look for community.”

It was a les­son the brand learned over and over through its pop-up con­cept shop in Lon­don last year, which fea­tured a range of labels and food expe­ri­ences curat­ed by Maiyet, all in a con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed spot near Sav­ile Row and Condé Nast’s UK headquarters.