It’s monstrously oversized, with a long train and a giant hood — you can barely see the mannequin’s featureless face peeking through. Every once in a while, a guest approaches the piece, casts a curious glance, and turns around, maybe after snapping a photo or two. But for the most part, we carry on — not realizing, perhaps, the colorful spray-paint cans, poster markers, and pens scattered around the floor. Everyone is, at least for now, just having a good time — sipping their drinks, chit-chatting, and flowing in and out of the main house, where Milli Point Two’s debut collection is on view. 

But first, of course, some background. 

Founders and Creative Directors Anthea Bebek and Tomislav (Tomo) Trcak are first cousins, both hailing from Samobor, a small town in Croatia with a population of less than 40,000. “[Tomo] was the one who was mentoring me through all my childhood — what to wear, what to buy, and where to buy it,” Anthea tells me. She’s the epitome of sporty chic, decked out in her brand’s oversized pink sweatshirt and shorts, paired with white Prada point-toe pumps. Also effortless: her blond blunt-cut bob that falls just shy of her shoulders. 

Their hometown wasn’t exactly the most sartorial-savvy city, so they looked to fashion hubs like Italy for style inspiration, taking cues from Tomo’s mother, who started shopping in Trieste in the ‘70s and ‘80s. “She [instilled] this love into Tomo — and he then gave it to me,” Anthea says. As if by osmosis, they learned to appreciate fashion and found a common language in dressing up. And while that’s an often-heard statement from many creatives in fashion, neither Tomo nor Anthea pursued a career in the industry. Not right away, at least. 

The prescribed path was to go to college after high school, and so, they followed tradition. As Anthea begins telling me about their careers and eventual pivot to fashion, Tomo appears from out of frame, flinging an arm around his cousin’s shoulder. Dressed in all black, he’s animated and expressive — the yin to Anthea’s perfectly poised yang. “We never went to college to study fashion,” Anthea continues. “It just came out of the blue.”

But how, exactly? It started with one piece — a three-dimensional jacket the cousins created by sewing two jackets, cutting one up, and patching it together on top of the first. Working with a local tailor, the cousins made four garments, which Tomo brought on a trip to Los Angeles a few years ago. Over 10,000 kilometers away from home, Tomo’s and Anthea’s ideas sent a few heads swiveling. Were they onto something? They wondered. 

They were. 

So, for over a year, Anthea and Tomo traveled throughout Italy, learning everything they could about the production and manufacturing process that would bring their creations to life — and back here, to Los Angeles. To now. To “Day One,” the brand’s inaugural collection — presented by fashion and media brand, Highsnobiety — inspired by the film, art, and music the cousins consumed in the late ‘80s and ‘90s in Croatia. 

Displayed on gigantic silver hangers around the foyer of a sprawling house in West Hollywood Hills, the collection is a playful mishmash of boxy shirts and outerwear and ultra-roomy bottoms with a potpourri of ‘90s punk subculture references. Throughout, I see printed graphics, chenille patches, and barbed-wire motifs, which make an appearance on multiple pieces. (It’s their emblem, the cousins tell me.) 

It’s playful — and that’s exactly what they are bringing to the table. Fashion can be too serious sometimes, and that shouldn’t always be the case, according to Tomo. “We’re not surgeons,” he says. That Tomo and Anthea don’t come from the all-too-serious world of fashion might just be their brand differentiator. Case in point: In a HighSnobiety article, Anthea described the brand as “​​crust punk meets cyberpunk, meets exiled futuristic samurai warriors, meets hard-on-the-outside-soft-on-the inside romantic, intergalactic vigilantes, meets superstar fantasy athleisure.” 

Yep. Didn’t I say they’re playful? And speaking of athleisure, sports — in its various formats — is referenced more than once throughout the line with football-inspired jerseys, rugby polos, and shorts with elastic waistbands that resemble retro boxing trunks. “It’s like we’re designing for a sports team from the future,” Tomo explains. 

Amongst these super-sized tees and jerseys, we see leather vests with pockets so large they probably hold more than most of my purses. (I’m not going to lie — I kind of love how much these pockets can pack and how great they look.) We see Milli Point Two’s three-dimensional patchwork technique rendered in denim — and even more impressively, in leather. The details in a Milli Point Two creation are evident the second you get your hands on it, and this jacket is a prime example. 

“The interesting thing is that my mom is doing every single [final detail] of this piece,” Anthea chimes in about a mustard-yellow sleeveless denim vest. There’s something about its frayed edges and painted-on graphic motifs (by Australian multi-media artist Pauly Bonomelli, no less) that evokes a distinctly nostalgic feeling. Anthea tells me that it’s her favorite piece from the collection — and it’s now quite possibly mine, too. 

And that’s not just because of the boxiness of its silhouette (something I always gravitate toward) or that it employs the brand’s signature deconstruction technique. It’s how it communicates Milli Point Two’s distinct sense of “familija.” Yes, Anthea’s mother has been lending a skilled hand throughout production, but the cousins also invited their close friends and family members to model garments for their brand’s campaign. If this isn’t proof that it takes a village, I don’t know what is. 

Hopefully, Tomo says, the clothes will stay in the “familija,” too, even as the decades move along. “The idea is that you share it with your kids after,” he tells me. “We want to make clothes that are never trendy — but always trendy enough.”

Outside, as the night falls and the breeze thickens, a larger crowd has begun to form around the party’s main focal points: the bar, the pizza station, and the denim coat. Once a blank canvas, now, the garment is completely transformed. One by one, guests pick up their coloring tool of choice and leave their artistic mark on the denim canvas — a still-wet-and-glistening collision of color, mini sketches, and stylistic lettering. 

Not too long after, Anthea appears in the crowd, picking up a spray-paint can and getting to work on the inviting flat surface of the white backdrop. Underneath a giant “Milli,” she traces two vertical lines for “Point Two.” What will come of the garment-slash-art-piece? I’m not entirely sure — but given how “Day One” is going so far, I can’t wait to find out.