It’s shaping up to be a big week for Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer. She’s in the running for Best Actress in a Drama at the Emmys this Sunday, and an army of her look-alikes stormed the runway at today’s Max Mara show. Creative director Ian Griffiths was backstage talking about Comer and Killing Eve’s creator, Phoebe Waller-Bridge—he’s a big fan. Waller-Bridge, he made a point of saying, was brought in earlier this year to rehab the script for the next James Bond film, and she’s apparently said it “will treat women properly.” Many Bond films have failed to adequately do that in the past. Griffiths’s new Spring collection for Max Mara is a would-be wardrobe for a female-led spy thriller, with clothes, as he said, for everything from the “car chase to the ball scene.”
To start, Candice Swanepoel, Gigi Hadid, and Doutzen Kroes emerged in variations on a theme: efficiently cut gray suiting with military utilitarian inflections. Doutzen’s tie matched her shirt. From there, Griffiths worked the same idea in total-look pastels, camel and khaki, or Prince of Wales checks, sometimes layering a softly structured dress with cascading volants on its narrow skirt underneath a more tailored blazer. The black-and-white polka-dot group was lively amid the monochrome repetitions. Coats are the thing at this label; but this being Spring, they were downplayed. A single double-breasted style was cut on the bias in icy blue cashmere, which gave it its generous proportions. Eveningwear is something newer for Max Mara. The show ended with a series of salopettes-style dresses, strappy across the back. You could picture a Bond girl slinking around a casino in one of them. Or possibly Jodie Comer at the Emmys. The Max Mara woman has fewer car chases than the average special agent, but she’s the protagonist in her own story; she wants to feel pulled together and looked at for the right reasons. Strip away the show’s movie-prop kepi hats, weirdly wrong knee socks, and extreme hair and makeup, and this collection would deliver for her.