Toni Maticevski was born in 1976 and grew up in Seddon, in Melbourne's inner west, a suburb with a sizeable Macedonian community. His parents had migrated from Macedonia when it was still part of Yugoslavia.

He studied fashion at RMIT University, graduating with first-class honours. A Fashion Group International award on graduation brought a placement with Donna Karan in New York; offered an extended position there, he declined, finding the scale of the house creatively draining. He went instead to Paris, where he spent two seasons at Cerruti.

In 1998 he returned to Melbourne to launch his own label. Recognition came steadily. In 2002 his debut demi-couture collection won Best New Designer at the L'Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, and the same year he took part in Mercedes-Benz Australian Fashion Week for the first time. In 2005 he shared the Prix de Marie Claire award for Best New Designer with Kit Willow.

Maticevski is known above all for his gowns. His early signatures included skeletal dresses held together by a system of raw-edged silk straps, and he has returned season after season to a consistent silhouette, reworking it in new materials and constructions rather than chasing novelty. The approach, close in spirit to couture, has made his eveningwear a fixture on Australian red carpets. He has also added menswear, in a fluid, draped register of neutral jackets and trousers.

In 2016 Bendigo Art Gallery staged Maticevski: Dark Wonderland, his first solo exhibition, tracing the evolution of his practice from early influences to recurring themes. The same year he received the Australian Fashion Laureate, the industry-voted award for a career's contribution to Australian fashion internationally, ahead of a field that included Vogue Australia's editor Edwina McCann, Kym Ellery, Alex Perry and Dion Lee. By then his gowns were stocked by Selfridges and Harrods. "My Australian customers have always been the strongest," he told Fairfax Media.

After showing at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Sydney until 2006, he was invited to present in New York, where he showed until 2010. His work has also extended to dance: for Phillip Adams BalletLab he designed costumes for Miracle (2009) and Aviary (2011), the latter winning a Helpmann Award shared with the milliner Richard Nylon.

His career is a quiet argument for building a serious, design-led label from Melbourne, after testing oneself in New York and Paris and choosing to come home.

Nearly three decades on, the label remains independent and is still made largely in Melbourne's west: he manufactures in Yarraville, close to where he grew up, producing about 95 per cent of his garments there, with embroidery and leather goods made offshore. He remains closely involved in the making: "I design, I make the samples, I make the patterns," he told Broadsheet in 2025. "It's the part of my job that I love the most." He has shown on the Paris Fashion Week runway in past seasons and now presents mainly through showrooms, travelling to Paris each year; international markets account for most of his customers. His sculptural gowns have been worn by Sandra Oh, Florence Pugh, Keke Palmer and Reese Witherspoon, and the label also produces bridal collections.

Maticevski is notably private and rarely gives interviews. He describes his label as "the quiet name that everyone knows of", and has declined the idea of joining a large house, citing an industry that "churn[s] through creatives". In 2025, releasing five collections a year, he spoke of reconsidering the pace and direction of the business, and launched a personal photography project, The Way I See You, a book of portraits of the male form made over seven years.