From Slip-Ons to the G-Class: Mattias Gollin and BRABUS Preview in Paris

Mattias Gollin built a following by hand-setting pearls on Vans. Deep into Paris Fashion Week, the Italian designer’s touch surfaced on a BRABUS G-Class.

Gollin works from the Marche, the shoemaking district between Porto Sant’Elpidio and Civitanova Marche, and has kept his studio there rather than moving to Milan. Complex’s June profile traced a path through fashion design study in Milan, a fine arts degree in Macerata, and two design collectives he co-founded between 2019 and 2021 before going solo around 2023. He has said the pull is turning iconic, everyday products into high-end objects, and he traces the idea to a pearl-and-distressing custom he made about six years before that interview. He also prefers the Marche’s pace, where the trip to his studio takes five minutes, and leans on social media to show work in progress from wherever he is. Speaking at the Vans showroom in Paris during the June menswear shows, he put his reason for being there plainly: “It’s important to build credibility.”

Vans has been his breakout partner. By Gollin’s account, the relationship began when someone on the Vans team offered to send a few pairs to experiment on, and his first pearl-covered checkerboard Slip-On was online two days later. A three-pair Slip-On project followed in 2024 at $390 a pair. WWD reported ahead of the next drop that the Autentiche, an Authentic released in Miami during the city’s December art week in 2025, carried roughly 2,000 pearls and crystals per pair, applied by hand in the Marche, with up to eight hours of work in each pair and a $750 price. Later Autentiche runs came in triple black and pink, and the crystal application has crossed into clothing too, starting with a pair of camo shorts. His own product notes say every box includes spare stones and suggest gluing any that fall off back on, adding that the shifting pattern makes each pair more individual.

 

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That product note is the clearest statement of how Gollin thinks about wear. The two star-patterned Slip-Ons he showed in June used a sparser layout, designed so that lost stones and scuffs become part of the finish. The pearl treatment has also reached work boots and snow boots, the latter through an official collision rel at ComplexCon in 2025, and Vans has run its own pearl-dressed styles in parallel.

The client list moved fast. Drake, Kai Cenat, Vinicius Jr. and Lamine Yamal have all worn his pieces, and he recently built a one-of-one pair of football boots for France’s Michael Olise. In the Complex interview he described his next step as building a complete brand with clothing alongside footwear, rather than staying known as a customizer.

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The G-Class is not Gollin’s first vehicle. In 2024 he co-founded VVT, short for Vita Veloce Team, with J Balvin, and the studio’s first public object was a motorcycle. Built with French electric maker DAB Motors on its 1α platform, the red bike was unveiled as a surprise at Balvin’s 40th birthday celebration in Tuscany in 2025, its enclosed bodywork drawing open comparisons with Kaneda’s machine from the 1988 anime Akira. The finish mattered as much as the shape: the bodywork was 3D printed, then sanded and given a hand-applied matte red patina that deliberately kept its scratches and scuffs, the same idea of built-in wear that runs through his distressed Slip-Ons. A small production run followed as the VVT/DAB MARK I, limited to seven individually commissioned units at $60,170 each and handcrafted in France.

DAB is also how BRABUS reached two electric wheels. After CEO Constantin Buschmann and DAB founder Simon Dabadie met at the Monaco Yacht Show, the two companies unveiled three electric motorcycles at Milan Design Week in April 2026, all built on the same 1α architecture. Each runs a 72-volt, 7.1 kWh battery good for up to 150 km in town, and the URBAN E models carry a red BRABUS Masterpiece seat in the same Shell-quilted leather the company fits to its cars. Pricing runs from €16,590 before VAT for the DAB 1α BRABUS to €20,800 for the BRABUS URBAN E, with a 40-unit FIRST EDITION at €32,400 split ten apiece across BRABUS’s Peetch, Desert Sand, Superviolet and Fusion Red colors. Dabadie described the arrangement as “not a traditional collaboration,” while Buschmann framed it as a way to open BRABUS to an entirely new range of customers.

Nobody involved has said whether DAB made the introduction between Gollin and BRABUS. The chain is visible regardless: Gollin’s studio built a bike with DAB, DAB built bikes with BRABUS, and Gollin’s own website lists DAB Motors among his past projects.

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The Paris sighting was one of three culture-facing BRABUS stories inside a single week. On October 2, the company announced the BRABUS URBAN E FRAGMENT EDITION, a ten-unit version of its DAB-built electric bike finished in black and white with Hiroshi Fujiwara’s fragment design, including white carbon wheel covers, white brake calipers, and a white Masterpiece leather seat. Three days later came the LOVERS ROSE collection with Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz, a run of T-shirts, hoodies, track pants, shorts and caps that BRABUS says drew on the couple’s own BODO coupe.

Both were presented at ComplexCon, which marked its 10th anniversary in Los Angeles on October 3 and 4, its first edition in the city, with Fujiwara serving as one of its two artistic directors alongside Playboi Carti. On the same Saturday that BRABUS product was on the convention floor in California, the Gollin car was being filmed in Paris.

None of this is entirely new territory. BRABUS has sold its own apparel for years, most recently a 19-piece Motor Heritage collection in August 2025, and has put its name on watches, jetboards, yachts and motorcycles. What has shifted in 2026 is the pace. The BODO, named for the founder who died in 2018, debuted at Lake Como in May as the company’s first car with a completely bespoke body: a carbon-bodied 2+2 grand tourer with a 1,000 PS twin-turbo V12, priced at around one million euros. Constantin Buschmann, who succeeded his father and now serves as CEO and owner, has since taken the brand to the Monaco Yacht Show, to a streetwear convention in Los Angeles, and into a Paris fashion week.

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The open questions are the basic ones. BRABUS has not published a name, a build sheet, or an official photo set for the car, and its newsroom, which posted both ComplexCon projects within days of each other, carried no entry on the Gollin project as of October 12. It is not yet known either the G-Class is a show car, a client commission, or the first of a series, whether the surface uses the pearls and crystals Gollin applies to footwear or a different material, or how it is meant to hold up in daily use, a question his shoes answer by shipping spare stones in every box.