As of today, fans perusing online fashion retailer Mytheresa will notice more than the usual range of Balenciaga jeans, Reina Olga swimsuits, and Saint Laurent bags available on the platform. The just-launched Life section puts the spotlight on home decor, tableware, and small furniture pieces from 60 design powerhouses—Dolce & Gabbana, Fornasetti, Tom Dixon, and Zaha Hadid among them.
After Mytheresa’s founding in 2006, womenswear had been the retailer’s sole attraction until it expanded with kids’ collections, in 2019, and then a men’s selection the following year. Creating a home-centric lifestyle category was “a natural progression,” Tiffany Hsu, vice president of fashion buying at Mytheresa, says.
The evolution from fashion retailer to full-service destination has become quite the trend among e-commerce’s stylish set. Fashion-first retailer Net-a-Porter expanded into home and tabletop categories last year, while Moda Operandi had made the move years prior. For Mytheresa, the desire to embrace the 360-degree approach was rooted in wanting to “serve as a platform for all things luxury,” Hsu says. “It’s interesting to tap into a different aspect of it.”
At launch, most of Mytheresa’s vendor lineup could be likened to a wardrobe’s crisp, white button-up—think bold-faced labels that are tried and true in the home space. Vitra, Ginori, and Cassina are among them. A Missoni pouf swathed in a bright, zigzag motif joins the mix, while beautifully patterned dinnerware by La DoubleJ inspires visions of a plate wall.
Going forward, Hsu has big plans to bolster the Life section with offbeat goods from a slew of indie designers “instead of just the heavy hitters” that currently dominate the scene, she explains. “I’m keen to get into the lesser-known names and the interesting things that you don’t find often on home sites.” In six months, Hsu anticipates that the category will be “much more comprehensive,” fueled by the presence of these “niche designers” and the addition of large-format furniture options in particular to elevate it from a “decorating and gifting assortment” seen elsewhere in the industry.
As for the category’s creative direction? Partnering with more minimalist-minded brands, such as Menu and 101 Copenhagen “demonstrates the direction we want to go,” Hsu points out. The inclusion of Vitra and its roster of classic chairs, such as the cantilevered 1960s Panton, also signals Mytheresa’s ambition for Life to entail timeless appeal with buzzy labels woven in between.
Mixing well-known and under-the-radar brands has proven to be a successful formula on the fashion side—a metric the brand hopes to replicate in the lifestyle sphere. As Hsu puts it, the realms of fashion and home are propelled by similar ideas but “translated into different works, materials, and settings.”
