Mexx

Mexx is a Dutch fashion brand founded in 1986 by Rattan Chadha, who merged his existing menswear label Moustache with his womenswear label Emanuelle into a single company [6]. The brand explains its name as a combination of those two labels plus a pair of kisses: M(oustache) + E(manuelle) + XX, the two X's standing for the kisses [3]. From the start it carried a single lifestyle idea across both lines, and an early advertising campaign, "Everything should be XX," helped the new name catch on.

In beauty, the relevant part of Mexx is its fragrance line, which is licensed and operated by the beauty company Coty rather than by the fashion business itself. Both the fashion brand and the fragrance line are active: Coty renewed its long-term fragrance licence in 2024, and the fashion side was sold to a new owner the same year [7].

Rattan Chadha built Mexx by joining two brands he already ran, Moustache for men and Emanuelle for women. According to the company, the two labels "stood for the same lifestyle and would make a stronger statement as one unit," which led him to combine them in 1986. Mexx is registered in the Netherlands, and its head office has sat in several Dutch locations over the years, beginning in Voorschoten before moving to Amsterdam and later to Drunen.

The fashion business expanded widely through the 2000s. By 2010 Wikipedia records the company as selling in more than fifty countries and producing around forty million garments a year, placing it among Europe's larger clothing brands [6]. The fragrance line arrived later than the clothing: it launched in 2000 with two scents, Mexx Man and Mexx Woman.

Mexx has a split structure, and its ownership depends on which part of the business is in question. The fashion brand has changed hands repeatedly. It was bought by the American company Liz Claiborne in 2001, sold to a joint venture involving The Gores Group in 2011, and then pushed into difficulty: three Mexx holding companies were declared bankrupt on 4 December 2014 [6]. The Turkish firm Eroğlu Holding bought the brand in February 2015, after which it returned to Dutch ownership under RNF Holding in 2017. In 2024 it changed hands again, with HVEG Fashion Group acquiring the brand and completing its purchase of the RNF Group by December that year [6].

The fragrance line follows a separate thread. It is run under licence by Coty, which lists Mexx among its consumer beauty brands [2]. That partnership began in 2016, and in February 2024 Coty announced an extension described as covering more than twenty-five years and "encompassing all Mexx fragrances and colognes" [7]. The trade outlet FashionUnited reported the same renewal, noting it ran for at least twenty-five years [8]. Because of this arrangement, sources differ on who "owns" Mexx: Coty's materials and Wikipedia point to Coty as fragrance licensee and HVEG Fashion Group as the fashion owner, while the Mexx fashion site still references RNF Company in its dealer systems [1].

Mexx frames itself around everyday, unfussy clothing. The company states that its "ultimate goal" is "to promote a casual, modern lifestyle," one it describes as "having fun, being free-spirited, optimistic, open-minded, nonconformist and inspiring." Its mission, in its own words, is to "create fashion that finds a way into wardrobes and lives," made for "real people" who "prefer being real to being perfect." The brand has used the line "Life begins with XX." On the fragrance side, the line has been positioned toward a younger audience, with colourful packaging and bright notes [9].

The fragrance catalogue grew out of the original 2000 pairing of Mexx Man and Mexx Woman. Later releases include Mexx Black Woman in 2009 and, in 2018, the Forever Classic Never Boring scents for women and for men. More recent additions noted by Coty include the "Summer Bliss" fragrance and a "Black & Gold" holiday edition. In Coty's account, Mexx ranks as "one of the top four fragrance brands in Germany" [7].

The Mexx fashion business has published a set of environmental and sourcing commitments. It says it carried out a first assessment of its sustainability performance through the EcoVadis platform in 2023, receiving a "Good" rating. The company joined Better Cotton in 2023 and is a member of amfori, a business association for sustainable trade, and it describes steps such as using wood-based fibres from Lenzing and sourcing leather through tanneries audited by the Leather Working Group. These claims apply to the clothing business; the Coty-run fragrance line is described separately by Coty as "pushing the category boundaries on sustainability" [7].

Mexx is active. The fragrance line operates under Coty's renewed long-term licence announced in 2024, and the fashion brand was traded to HVEG Fashion Group the same year and runs a live webshop [7].