MYUS: Behind the Wallpaper and Into another World

This Paris Fashion Week, I had the pleasure of visiting Cube Showroom to discover MYUS’ Spring/Summer ’27 collection, Behind the Wallpaper. The only word I can use to describe it is otherworldly. The designs transported me to a place I did not want to leave.

MYUS

Designed in Paris and handmade in Italy, MYUS was founded by Braden Myus in Los Angeles in 2022. After three years and six seasons, Braden brings us Behind the Wallpaper, a collection to rival those produced by designers with decades of experience.

The independent womenswear brand has dressed the likes of Brent Faiyaz and, more recently, Charli XCX. Now, with talk of opening a flagship store in London, MYUS is moving towards a more commercial direction. As Braden explains, his intention is, of course, for the clothes to be worn, but worn by the right people. People who love fashion but also want to be part of the world it creates.

‘I guess I am trying to inspire the observer and/or the wearer to get as obsessed or enthralled by the collection as I was with the initial research that inspired it.’

The self-taught designer approaches each and every piece with an experimental curiosity and a meticulous attention to detail. The result: he constructs not only beautiful clothes, but entire fashion universes.

I ask Braden how he conceives these worlds:

‘I start with a theme, trying to create the world that inspires me, then I work backwards from there to develop the clothes.’

For Behind the Wallpaper, he draws inspiration from weathered Paris interiors and the people who live there. Braden interrogates the guts of Parisian rooms, exploring them as living archives, housing a tapestry of past memories which accumulate with each new inhabitant. Through the collection, MYUS evokes the Belle Époque of Parisian buildings, exploring these spaces as biographies of private lives.

Behind the Wallpaper

Braden’s artistic process begins with what he describes as ‘fragments of his obsessions’, which are then ‘collected, dismantled and translated through material, construction and craft.’ For this collection, he collects a myriad of inspirations from antique interior design elements, which he then repurposes in garment form. Fringed French curtains are reimagined as custom tassel trims, aged speckled mirrors are reflected in foil-treated lambskin and vintage chandelier crystals are given new life in the Chandelier Top.

Typically, in the process of decay, memory erodes over time. With Behind the Wallpaper, it endures. Rather than conceal deterioration, Braden builds upon it, layer by layer. Antique buttons adorn contemporary fabrics, while sheer materials display rather than cover those beneath.

The result is a kind of pentimento in garment form, through which traces of earlier designs remain visible beneath the finished piece. Like the rooms that inspire them, the garments become repositories of memory.

The designer explains his curiosity in preserving the histories and memories interior spaces hold:

“I found it really interesting how people put wallpaper over the top of old wallpaper, and then it peels back, and it’s like an entire life was lived there.”

Multi-layered lace, for example, is central to the collection. Its overlapping scallops recall peeling wallpaper, where fragments of earlier designs emerge beneath the present.

‘I kept returning to lace because it allows you to look through a layer without making everything visible.’

Traditionally, lace has an embroidered face and a matte reverse, not intended for display. Braden, however, treats both sides as equally worthy of attention. Wires and graphic prints are embedded within the dentelle, transforming its reverse into a design feature in its own right.

This becomes the collection’s common thread: details typically concealed within the garment are brought to the fore. Seams, stitching and linings, elements usually left unremarkable because they are hidden, are not only made visible at MYUS, but become the most compelling features of the collection.

Peeling Back the Layers

The longer you look at each piece, the more beauty you notice hiding beneath the surface. The Vinyl Salon Trench, for example, comprises three layers. Inside, a charmeuse lining sits between a double layer of jacquard and silk, while a vinyl overlay adds a glossy raincoat texture. Rather than stitching each component tightly together, Braden leaves space between the jacquard and the vinyl. Thus each compound remains distinct, simultaneously inviting us to discover what lies between them.

‘It’s kind of like people where, you know, you don’t judge a book by its cover. You can see more about a person once they unfold and you get to know them. That was what I wanted to see in this collection. So there’s a lot of layering.’

The layering not only reflects successive histories of wallpaper, but also alludes to the legacies of those who once inhabited these spaces. The multiple generations that have lived within the same walls, each decorating the same space, each leaving their own mark.

Every detail of the Salon Trench reads like a page in the collection’s design narrative of aged Parisian interiors. Even the buttons are French vintage, sourced from a luxury antique dealer in the sixth arrondissement. These handpicked ceramic flowers are bespoke to each coat, while the arrangement of the three layers varies from piece to piece. Much like wallpaper patterns, which shift subtly from sheet to sheet, no two trenches are exactly alike.

Reflections are prompted by the Mirror Racer Jacket and Trouser, as well as the Metallic Blazer and matching maxi skirt in silk lamé. The garment’s silver shell evokes the mottled, oxidised Trumeau mirrors of Parisian interiors. Rather than clear mirror images, the foil-treated fabrics offer partial reflections, urging a second look. A glance down at their outfit reveals to the wearer a glimpse of their blurred, contemplative face.

MYUS: The Beauty of Imperfection

The collection foregrounds a juxtaposition between surface beauty and what lies beneath, giving way to imperfection. The Chambre Wool Suit is a prime example of this. Traditional precision tailoring is unpicked by ripped shoulders and knees. Braden explains:

‘The suit is an archetype, generally a symbol of aristocratic success and intellectualism. With the distressing, it gives way to see underneath the surface, beyond the perfection. It’s not distressing just for aesthetics; it shows another layer, a different side of the same individual.’

The two-piece suit embraces a reconstructed elegance, repurposing traditional tailoring for contemporary feminine avant-garde fashion. MYUS reworks the traditionally rigid, masculine suit silhouette around the female form, introducing a bustle and cinched waist. Braden explains this important contradiction:

‘The juxtaposition of a “male” outfit or applied gender role flipped to reflect a feminine shape or romantic adjustment will always interest me. It’s adapting to how we view the world now. How we approach dressing and what actually feels more like our true selves.’

Certainly, the ensemble fulfills Braden’s interest in dismantling traditional dress rules in order to prioritise more fluid forms of self expression. Plus, he adds, in full transparency:

‘I also just love a woman in a suit’

Next, Braden presents the Floral Wallpaper Cafe Racer Jacket and Trouser. This set has a more unisex, boxy silhouette.

‘This is a lambskin. We designed the wallpaper pattern, but the flowers fade in some places, so it’s not the same frame’

Just as wallpaper cracks and fades in certain places more than others, tracing the lambskin down the leg, you notice intricate nuances and ruptures in the floral pattern, like a shattered china bowl. The ditsy surface design is what initially caught my eye, but it was the unexpected disruptions that held my gaze. It’s just as Braden intends:

‘When something is “perfect”, it does not feel three-dimensional to me. I want people to need to look deeper, explore more and find the details they may have first missed.’

Throughout the collection, MYUS elevates mundane functional garment details into architectural features. The Arrangement Shirt is a prime example: the Japanese silk is embedded with wire in the collar, allowing the wearer to shapeshift the shirt’s silhouette. The metamorphic piece performs a kind of magic trick at the hands of its wearer. Its chameleonic form reflects MYUS’s interest in clothing as an extension of personal identity that can adapt to the client’s personality and style.

If I had to choose a favourite piece of the collection, it would be the Chandelier Top. Constructed piece by piece with 18th-century crystals sourced in Paris from Atelier CIR, the antique restoration workshop that refurbishes Chanel’s chandeliers, the top distils the collection’s central idea: a historical French furnishing reimagined as a garment.

Design poetry from head to toe

The collection’s footwear, made at the Margiela factory in Venice, includes pointed-toe slippers and Italian leather boots. The Cavalières Boots in both eggshell blue and black embody the core motifs of the collection. Pebbled 100% ostrich leather resembles a weathered wall surface, while the overlapping harness and double closure sustain the theme of peeling layers.

From head to toe, the collection’s attention to detail reflects Braden’s dedication to creating more than just clothing: but an experience for the wearer.

‘It seems that “fashion” has lost its spark, I aim to bring that back, make the entire experience something worth remembering.’

Undoubtedly, Behind the Wallpaper is impossible to forget. The pieces linger in the mind like the memory of a place you went to once. Like a dream of a beautiful Parisian bedroom, its wallpaper peeling away to reveal a glimpse of something else entirely.

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Credits

Creative Director: Braden Myus
Producer: Simone Kanan
Campaign Photography: Aitor Sola
Cinematographer: Sophia French
Styling: Aidan Korte
Models: Lena Ballard, Taya Kuchinskaya, Simone Kanan
Hair: Lisa-Marie Powell
Make-Up: Anne-Sophie Vega
Lighting: Prosper Panhard
Special Thanks: Thomasine Gloves, Antic Tonic, Manon