“Nobody calls me ‘daddy,’” Philipp Plein reflected: “Except for Rocket.” Plein’s perfectly behaved toddler sat on his father’s lap during this call, munching on crudités and watching Peppa Pig—and Daddy Pig—on his papa’s phone. Meanwhile, Plein talked through a collection that went back to his mid-aughts roots.
The tattoo patterns on menswear and womenswear referred to a collection from 2008 or so, when he was still pivoting his focus from furniture to fashion. Plein showed it in a 500-square-meter ghost train ride at the former trade show Bread & Butter: to see the collection guests had to brave the ride. After discussing this—plus his same-era Swarovski “Pimp Machine”—I asked Plein if he ever felt nostalgic for that earlier phase of his business. “It’s very refreshing to have these kinds of thoughts sometimes. Now everything is much more calculated. We work with forecasts and merchandising plans. So everything is a bit more structured too.”
The collection offered a full street-to-suiting suite of unpretentious luxury for women and men, as per. Swarovski-spattered bouclé jackets and skirts, granny-ish womenswear tailoring twisted with denim accents, volumized biker jeans, and so-called “mob wife” faux furs were key pieces in womenswear. Menswear counterparts included tattoo-etched varsity jackets and crystal-patterned suiting, washed camo-pattern denim shirting, and biker accented eveningwear.
Plein’s main line might be much more planned these days, but the new hotel he’s penciled to open in Milan by the end of 2024 should inject a fresh dose of his signature decadent anarchy. And of his Plein Sport second line, he added, “I don’t only do it for the money: I do it for the fun.” Plein remains one of the very few true renegades in luxury’s highly policed elitist space.
