Justina McKee Was Tired of Fashion Being Aspirational But Not Attainable. So She Built Matte Collection. – Essence

Long before the America’s Next Top Model documentary that just dropped on Netflix, we’ve known that the fashion industry sold women on aspiration and delivered exclusion. 

As women, many of us have likely shared similar experiences. We buy the clothes because they look incredible on the hanger or in the photos that are being modeled online and then you try them on at home and they fit nothing like you imagined. Either the proportions were off, the sizing ignored entire categories of women, or the aesthetic was aspirational in a way that quietly communicated who the industry was actually designing for. 

Justina McKee watched this go on for years, got tired of it, and in 2017 founded Matte Collection in Atlanta to do something about it.

“So much of fashion felt aspirational but not attainable,” McKee says. “I wanted to create pieces that women didn’t have to adjust themselves to fit into the clothing would meet them where they are.” Eight years later, Matte Collection has grown into a globally recognized label with over one million followers, international reach, and a name that counts Lori Harvey, Angela Simmons and Tabria Majors among its supporters. The “for women, by women” ethos McKee launched with hasn’t changed, and the problem she set out to solve hasn’t either.

McKee describes what she was building as fashion that “feels luxurious but lives in your everyday life.” The need was real and largely unmet, with approximately 67 percent of American women wear a size 14 or above, and for decades the industry had largely designed around everyone else. For McKee, fixing that wasn’t just about expanding a size range, but how a woman feels when she puts something on. “A woman shouldn’t have to spend excessively to feel elevated,” she says. “She should receive premium fabric, thoughtful construction, and longevity, pieces that stay in her wardrobe season after season.”

Atlanta shaped a lot of this. The city’s culture of self-determination, its refusal to wait for outside validation, got into Matte Collection early. 

“People create their own lanes here instead of waiting for permission,” McKee says. “That energy pushed me to trust my instincts early and scale faster than I originally imagined.” The women in Atlanta shaped the brand’s aesthetic too. “Women here dress confidently and unapologetically,” McKee says, and that energy pushed Matte Collection toward what she describes as a “balance of elevated minimalism with bold femininity.”

McKee keeps coming back to one thing: community. From the beginning she made a deliberate choice to talk to her customer rather than at her, by showing real bodies, having honest conversations about fit, and making women feel like they were part of the brand rather than just recipients of it. “Our audience became collaborators, not just consumers,” she says. “Feedback influenced sizing decisions, fabric development, and entire collections. The brand didn’t grow because we chased trends; it grew because women felt seen.”

Going global forced McKee to confront something every founder eventually faces: how do you scale without losing what made the brand worth following in the first place. “Letting go of control but not vision,” is how she describes the shift. In the early days, she was in everything. But growth meant building a team that could execute the brand’s identity without her in every room. “The learning curve was shifting from doing everything to creating systems that protect quality and consistency across markets,” she says. “Growth isn’t just selling more it’s maintaining identity while reaching more people”

That same authenticity extends to who wears the brand. “We don’t chase celebrity we respond to alignment,” McKee says. “When someone wears Matte Collection because it naturally fits their lifestyle and aesthetic, that resonates more than any campaign. The goal is never placement; it’s connection. If she would wear it without us asking, then it belongs on her.”

McKee isn’t slowing down. More categories, physical retail experiences and a deeper global footprint are all part of the next chapter. But when she talks about what she actually wants to leave behind, it isn’t market share. “I want Matte Collection to represent possibility: a brand built independently, scaled thoughtfully, and centered around women feeling confident in their everyday lives,” she says. “If the impact is that women feel considered not overlooked then we’ve done what we set out to do.”