Eve & Max: Creative and Conscious Fashion
For styles as eclectic, timeless, and unique as today’s woman, Eve & Max is the conscious woman’s ready-to-wear brand you will want to indulge in all season long. Founder Max Trowbridge and co-creative director Samudra Hartanto present their second iteration, Collection Twenty-Three, titled Blue Inferno, featuring an art collaboration with Texas-based artist Zeke Williams.
Trowbridge, who started the line in 2020 with longtime friend Hartanto, wanted to focus on building a sustainable business, a fashion brand designed with the belief that style should be ethical, beautiful, and artful. Founded with an ethos to reimagine the lifecycle of fashion, Eve & Max presents one seasonless collection yearly which is designed in Paris and made exclusively in New York City.
Meeting in London while studying fashion, this English lady with impeccable taste now resides in Dallas, Texas, while Samudra, originally from Jakarta, Indonesia, currently calls Paris, France, his home.
Hartanto brings a wealth of talent to the brand following an extensive career with some of the world’s most well-known design houses. Joining the Louis Vuitton ready-to-wear team in 1997, under
the artistic debut of Marc Jacobs as a women and accessories designer, Hartanto moved to Hermès as a senior womenswear designer working with Jean-Paul Gaultier, and in 2010, joined Gaultier at his eponymous fashion house to focus on haute couture.
Coalescing his design repertoire, Hartanto shares, “instead of the traditional two-piece suit with a jacket and pants, we propose something tailored yet playful, such as the plaid jacket and matching bustier, and the trench dress, Sasha, which has a slim torso and generous skirt with a mini cape, giving the illusion of cap sleeves.”
As for the artistic collaboration with Zeke Williams, the limited-edition print, Blue Inferno, on silk charmeuse becomes an extension of the artist’s interest in fashion, exploration of color and forms found in nature, and the use of digital tools in creating an image. “The original paintings were a chaotic exploration of blue and red hues interacting with black, grey, and silver spray; the cut stenciled designs are taken from photographs of plants and gardens I took while walking with my wife,” explains Zeke. “The messy spray patterns were created using specially modified nozzles for spray cans of archival paint made by the Montana Company for graffiti artists.” The final digital work signifies ocean turbulence, yet formed from a flower, signifying that the ocean is as delicate as it is powerful.
In keeping with Max’s ethos, a portion of sales from the collection will benefit Mission Blue, a global organization founded by legendary oceanographer Dr Sylvia Earle.
