Mplus Design Accessories · Berlin, Germany
The label that carries her initials
Melanie Meyer designs MPlus in her own Berlin atelier and has every piece made by an artisan workshop she chose herself in Braga. The name is simply her initials, M + M.
For more than twenty years, Melanie Meyer dressed other people's collections. She worked in fashion as a stylist and visual merchandiser, setting up shop floors and staging clothes that were never hers, most of it fast fashion moving at fast-fashion speed. What she wanted was something quieter and made to last, on her own terms. So she gave the label her own initials, M and M, and started again.
She designs in a small atelier in Berlin, and still makes some pieces there by hand herself. It is where the label began and where each new one starts, drawn and worked out before it goes anywhere near production.
The workshop she chose
When it came to making the pieces properly, Melanie went looking for a workshop that shared how she wanted to work: small, careful, and answerable for its conditions. She found it in Braga, in northern Portugal, an artisan workshop that cuts and sews the leather in short runs, and she goes there herself to see the work. The leather is chosen for how it ages, soft hides from tanneries in Italy and Portugal, and everything is made within the EU, in small numbers rather than by the season.
Simple, and clever
The pieces themselves are deliberately plain, and quietly clever. A mini wallet rides as a crossbody one day and a necklace the next, a belt bag hides a separate pocket for a phone, each one made to move between occasions rather than sit in a drawer.
Twenty years dressing other labels, and now one that is hers.
