Hacoy

Linen workwear, silk and swimwear

Munich · Germany

Maximilian Alexander Rupp

“I have always seen clothing as a means of communication, and used it that way.”

Maximilian Rupp, founder

Maximilian Rupp runs HACOY in Munich and says plainly that he is not its designer. He brings the ideas and makes the business calls; Romana Tricoli, an Italian designer he knew from an earlier job, turns them into sketches. Born in Zurich and in Munich for more than twenty years, he studied business psychology and built Studibon, a student discount app, along the way. He also spent a semester in Spain and took a Master's in fashion brand management at Polimoda in Florence. He started HACOY in 2021.

I have three questions for you, and something in return.

Three questions.

Selected pieces

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HACOY Clothing · Munich, Germany

The shirts people laughed at

Maximilian Rupp was told to start HACOY with a single category and ignored the advice. Five years on, the label has had a shop of its own in Munich, and closed it again.

The pink shirts came first, and the yellow ones. He was about eighteen, he liked standing out, and he dressed that way. People laughed sometimes, or made a joke of it, and then the joke turned into a conversation and a few of the conversations turned into friendships. That was the useful part. A shirt could talk to somebody before he did. The name he later gave the label is an acronym of Happiness, Comfort and Joy.

A group in bright clothes on a yellow and orange slide, a pink railing behind, everyone smiling.

A shirt for home

When the pandemic sent people home to work, they wanted to be comfortable and still look ready for business. Sitting in pyjamas did nothing for him, and he holds that putting on a proper shirt changes how a day goes. So the question became which fabric could do both. The answer was linen, a shirt in two colours with a tie that comes off.

Close up of a rust red linen tie against a black linen shirt.

The two colours did not stay in the shirt. They went on into a blouse, a skirt, a dress, the bikinis and the swim shorts.

The first shop opened on 31 May 2023 at Corneliusstraße 2, near Gärtnerplatz, and closed in 2024 after about a year. HACOY works now from a showroom on Maistraße. Friends still ask him why he makes clothes in Munich of all places. Munich was a fashion capital once, he says, and he wants to make it chic and cool again.

Advice he did not take

He was told more than once to start with one category and get good at it. He did the opposite and set out to make everything a person wears in a day and a night. His reasoning is that someone who trusts the shirt will trust the underwear too, so the trust does not have to be won again each time. Nothing is marked down at the end of a season.

Two people on a plain white background in matching steel blue silk, a bralette and boxer shorts.

Circular Orbit was announced in 2023 as four services: loans for an occasion, free repairs, buyback, and new pieces made from offcuts. Today it shows in the shop. Worn pieces come back as pre-owned, flawed ones are sold openly as Perfectly Imperfect, sample pieces stay in circulation, and some of the sportswear is painted by hand, each one of a kind.

Two places, two crafts

An idea becomes a sketch, the sketch becomes a tech pack for the workshop, and he and his designer check the first sample on site before anything goes into production.

Linen goes to Vilnius and everything else to a workshop near Ferrara, and families run both. The Italian contacts came through her. She lives in Italy and is often at the workshop.