Mattt studio and shop

For a city that often fetishizes the handmade, there are surprisingly few opportunities in Melbourne to see the actual making of the design works that we buy and admire. Architecturally too, the meeting of store, gallery and open studio is an underdeveloped form. Although rents in Melbourne are on the rise, designer-makers have been able to open their own retail spaces more easily than in other cities around the world.

Case in point is Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street, which has been reborn as a boutique shopping and dining strip for the locally produced. Many of the new establishments appearing here have a name across the door that relates directly to the person behind the cash register, while the back rooms or upstairs spaces are where the work that ends up in the window is produced. The Mattt studio and shop takes this one step further, in that they will make the bag you buy on the same table as the till. As it happens, one of the only other places in Melbourne you can enjoy this open transaction is at the other end of the street – at Crumpler’s customizing store which is a reminder of the early beginnings of today’s courier bag empire.

With Jem Selig of Like Butter, Matt Thomson designed and built the Mattt studio and shop (Thomson being the third T). In the centre of the space is the table, created out of many layers of ply and laminate with a contoured landscape that integrates three sewing machines, drawers full of display stock, cutting table, storage and store counter. It divides maker/merchant from customer via a carefully wrought scale: the table keeps visitors at bay from industrial machines while offering a view of almost the entire making process. Only sharp cutting machines and digital fabric printers are kept out the back. Surrounding this centrepiece, timber and office-generic metal strip shelving lines half the space. The customized timber shelves are perforated with holes that are plugged with small stainless steel posts that hold the bags in neat formation.

Come nightfall and the store is aglow, with Thomson still hunched over a machine. It’s a scene that reflects the character of the brand, where the act of putting your name on the work you sell is a commitment to its quality. But Thomson isn’t entirely alone. There is a community around these bags: from customers who suggest improvements, Thomson’s staff who have helped finesse the point of sale, the circle of fabric designers who create the look of each bag’s fabric panel, to the other makers and artists whose work is exhibited and on sale. Matt has been making bags for ten years; the space and work reflect an obsession with continuity of practice. The trained mechanical engineer in Thomson likes the patience involved in the refinement of a strap or a fabric corner or the tweaks needed to get a bag to hug its wearer so that it has the perfect profile. It’s the pleasure to be had in getting something just right.