Items, they’re called in fashion, and Anthony Melillo knows all about them. The Miami-based designer’s latest venture, DearMax, focuses solely on the cashmere sweater, but there were plenty of others in the past: There was his late-’90s label Nova, which brought the world judo pants for our then-increasingly yoga-fied lives. (Madonna, circa her The Next Best Thing era, was never out of hers.
) Then there is ATM (his initials: Anthony Thomas Melillo), his label which gave the world T-shirt dressing, introducing us all to the endless possibilities to be had from a simple shirt with unparalleled softness and drape. “My comfort zone,” as Mellillo said over Zoom on one recent morning, “is perfecting things, and I’ve done it throughout my career—I’ve always been very focused.” Now it’s the cashmere sweater in Melillo’s sights, an item borne out of the times when he was traveling on a plane—or sitting in a restaurant, or in his office—and would reach for a piece of cashmere to wear over that tee.
(Or in this case—and belying his former life as a fashion stylist—artfully wrapped, scarf-like, around his neck.) The quotidien crew-necked silhouette shape Melillo has sketched out belies the fact that it's rendered in a gorgeous plush Lora Piana yarn, or that it’s knitted up without any seams, courtesy of waste-free 3D-manufacturing technology in Los Angeles. (Friends like Julianne Moore and Kelly Klein have already been wearing them.
) DearMax is launching.