From the tulip skirt to the Tribute heels, Italian designer Stefano Pilati’s eight-year tenure at Yves Saint Laurent yielded plenty of commercial hits and an alluring take on French chic.

He followed that up with three years at Ermenegildo Zegna, bringing a softer, more languid elegance to the Italian menswear giant.

Disillusioned with the corporate fashion system, Pilati retreated from the public eye in 2016.

He resurfaced in late 2018 with the launch of Random Identities – a label inspired by the energetic club culture of his new home city, Berlin.

“Being out of the fashion mainland is a conscious decision,” said Pilati to Angelo Flaccavento for Business of Fashion in April last year of his new label. “Berlin is a city with a modern mentality – a free place for free thinking, where I can operate in my own bubble and do my own thing the way I want to do it, at my own pace.”

From the get-go, Random Identities stood out for how different it was from the old luxury model in which Pilati used to operate. During his hiatus, the designer has come to see luxury as something defined not by pricing, but by quality, scarcity and its value to its intended audience.

As such, the brand does not play by conventional fashion rules. Prices hover around $100 to $800 and there are no seasonal collections, lavish runway shows, splashy campaigns, flagship store, e-commerce or delineation between the sexes.

Instead, its pieces are genderless and released in thematic drops – way before singer Rihanna adopted the model for her LVMH-backed Fenty label – with distribution limited to Ssense online and the Dover Street Market network offline.

What connects each capsule is a distinct mix of the utilitarian and militaristic undercut with a touch of subversion and kink – clothes that would fit right in at Berlin’s iconic techno club Berghain.

In a sign that Pilati’s game-changing gambit has caught on with the industry at large, Random Identities was invited by the world’s largest menswear trade show, Pitti Uomo, to feature as a special guest at its January edition – giving the designer a larger platform to broadcast his radical message and proving that one does not have to conform in order to win.

Julie de Libran’s curriculum vitae is chock-full of the most illustrious names in fashion.

The French designer cut her teeth at Giorgio Armani, headed the celebrity-dressing division at Prada and ended up as Marc Jacobs‘ right-hand woman at Louis Vuitton, directing his womenswear studio. When Jacobs left Vuitton, de Libran was recruited for the top job at Sonia Rykiel.

In her five years at the brand from 2014 to 2019, she brought the one-time beacon of liberated Left Bank cool back into the thick of the fashion conversation, adding a contemporary edge to the Sonia Rykiel signatures of striped knits, exposed seaming and easy ’70s silhouettes.

However, there was a tension between heritage, creative energy and commercial viability that proved tricky to resolve and the business side never seemed completely aligned with her vision.

Sales suffered, de Libran left and, soon after, the much-loved brand filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its United States’ business.

In an interview with Dana Thomas of The New York Times in Sept last year, de Libran said of her time at big brands: “I think of Louis Vuitton, where I was for six years, and then Rykiel; it’s about quantity and selling, and you lose the knowledge and appreciation. I learnt so much, but I’ve done that school. I can do it on my own now, properly.”

And what de Libran wants to do on her own is quietly radical in its way.

Towards the end of her Rykiel tenure, she introduced a haute couture collection and started nudging the brand towards sustainable materials.

It is these two tenets that form the core of the eponymous brand she launched last summer.

Presented during haute couture fashion week in an intimate showcase at her own home, de Libran looked to the couture model by selling her pieces made-to-order only to avoid over-production and wastage.

On the sustainability side, she committed to using deadstock fabrics. Due to the limited nature of her raw materials, the resulting products are similarly exclusive, with some pieces existing only as one-offs and others produced in extremely small runs.

She has also adopted the practice of doing one thing and doing it well.

Her collections consist only of dresses, a garment she says “has a strong personality” and “reflects how a woman feels and sees herself”.

Hers range from streamlined sheaths and billowy babydolls to fringed party numbers and pailletten-crusted goddess gowns – giving new meaning to the adage “dress for success”.

Marco Zanini’s claim to fame was resurrecting the dusty Rochas brand in 2009 after Olivier Theyskens’ departure in 2006 left the label adrift and drowned out by bigger competitors.

Staying on for five years, the Italian designer led Rochas from strength to strength before he was poached by Diego Della Valle of Tod’s Group to head the revival of the long-dormant Schiaparelli name.

His vision for the iconic Parisian house was delightfully madcap and utterly glamorous, but Zanini found himself let go after only a year.

“It became increasingly difficult to work with big brands and I realised it didn’t represent a creative challenge anymore. We were all experiencing this fashion fatigue. Everything feels so corporate,” Zanini said to Dana Thomas of The New York Times in September last year.

Zanini stayed away from the industry until early last year, when he heeded the call of fashion once more.

With the launch of Zanini Collection, he was determined to do things differently.

For one thing, the landscape is now vastly altered – everyone has seen the harmfulness of the excess and disposability that run rampant through fashion today.

His response is to place thoughtfulness at the heart of his new brand, deliberately keeping every aspect small and highly personal.

Zanini Collection is practically a one-man show.

For his debut Fall/Winter 2019 collection, he shot the lookbook, presented the collection in his own Milan apartment, invited buyers and fielded orders all by himself. In the spirit of keeping things small, the designer will be releasing only two collections a year, with each clocking in at less than 30 looks.

The pieces themselves are made in limited quantities, to preserve a sense of specialness, but also because the designer works with fabrics produced in small-batch runs.

Instead of trendy, throwaway pieces, Zanini designs with an eye towards timelessness, resulting in pieces that feel like modern heirlooms – precious things to love, keep and pass down.

He achieves this with his uniquely romantic yet contemporary take on historicism – a poet sleeve referencing 17th-century dresses, jet beading that nods to the flapper era, duchess satin that evokes mid-century couture and lustrous kimono silks that bring to mind ’40s boudoir dressing.

Tailoring has also emerged as a strong suit. His stands out for its powerful proportions given hourglass shapes via silk ribbons that tie at the back.

Furthering the aura of exclusivity, Zanini is keeping distribution tight. For now, he is bypassing e-commerce, preferring the clothes be discovered in stores and for clients to fall in love with the way they feel.

He is also partnering only 10 retailers worldwide, which include esteemed names such as Dover Street Market, Club 21 and Ikram – a convincing argument for thinking small but aiming high.