Manufacture III Is a New Lifestyle Concept From Designer Devi Kroell

All the while she was taking stock of an industry, and a world, in flux. The no-frills name of her new venture, Manufacture III, suggests she’s taken a step back and is looking at things from a broader perspective, rather than an intensely personal one. “I needed a fresh take,” Kroell says. “Something interesting, something that was building relationships between people. Society is really changing and people aren’t that interested in fashion anymore.” Or maybe it’s just that they’re interested in a different way.

The designer’s approach to Manufacture III is more in line with industrial (product) design and applied arts than fashion design, which is consistent with her training. Kroell, who is Austrian, studied patternmaking and fashion design in Vienna with Helmut Lang. “We spent a whole year just making a men’s shirt,” she relates. “And we had to do it over and over and over again until it was perfectly done. It was just one year of frustration to get a men’s shirt really perfect.” It’s an object lesson that has served the designer well. “I’ve never been inspired by vintage; I’ve always been inspired by this very practical angle,” she states. “There’s always been a certain functionality to everything I do. I’m really not the embellished type of person; I’m more rational and intellectual, I guess.”

Kroell might have a coolheaded approach to design, but her work—then and now—evokes positive emotional responses. Take her summer slip-ons of hand-knotted silk: The play of proportion makes them pop. Scale was also important when Kroell was making her new boxy accordion bag that has people stopping her on the street. “Obviously it’s inspired by document holders,” she says. “I wanted to do a crossbody bag that was a little bit more voluminous and something that would be more visible on a person, because right now crossbody bags in general are small, little flat affairs.”

In keeping with her love of exotics, the bag is offered in alligator as well as calf leather. Both speak to Kroell’s commitment to slow fashion. “The decision that I took when I launched MIII was that I wanted to do things at my own pace,” she says. “My focus is not to offer a lot of things, but to use artisanal and traditional knowledge to make a quality product that can transcend time. It’s kind of my way of doing the whole sustainable thing.” Quality over quantity: It’s the new old approach to creating products with meaning and long-lasting value.