Max Mara’s resort show was one of the pandemic’s fashion casualties: Planned to be staged in the gilded salons of the Yusupov Palace in St. Petersburg, it had to be canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. It would have been a rather extraordinary experience. The Moika Palace is one of the grandest among the city’s many stuccoed palazzos built in the 18th century with exquisite splendor by Italian architects. Full of inestimable art masterpieces displayed in ornate rococo staterooms and galleries, it’s also inhabited by dramatic dark memories: In its basement, Rasputin, the so-called Mad Monk, was famously murdered in 1916.
Creative director Ian Griffiths is still under the spell of the Russian city, which he visited several times prepping for the canceled show. “What I love about St. Petersburg is that its architecture was designed as a rational, ordered single unit by the emperor Peter the Great,” he explained. “Its neoclassical design was beautifully executed with a kind of poetry to it. This angle—rationalism blended with poetry—was something we wanted to explore for Max Mara too. I wanted to do a collection that had an idea of good design and order, but also a kind of rhapsodic lyricism inspired by the city of Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky.”
The designer was granted the honor of visiting the State Hermitage Museum’s archives, as he proudly explained during the collection’s presentation, held at Max Mara’s headquarters in Milan. The Romanovs’ clothes are kept there, as well as the sumptuous Yusupovs’ tenues de masquerade, together with countless creations of breathtaking magnificence belonging to the Russian aristocracy. Such an opulent aesthetic being a far cry from Max Mara’s sensible, pared-down elegance, some sort of stylistic middle ground had somehow to be found. “We called the collection ‘Reason and Romance,’” said Griffiths, “as if it were the title of a Tolstoy novel.” It’s a dynamic that seems fit for the times we’re living in now. “What struck me is that this is precisely what seemed the right concept to be developed,” said Griffiths. “Practical, well-designed, useful clothing is what you have to do now from a design standpoint, but at the same time, a sense of the lyrical or the poetical is exactly what we need today, because we need more than ever the kind of psychological feel-good factor that beautiful, comforting clothes can give us. We need poetry whenever we can find it.”
On the collection’s mood board, portraits of Irina and Felix Yusupov—“I’ve got to know them very well,” said the designer, “as I’ve learned about everything there is to know about them!”—exuded their androgynous charm. They were so look-alike, sometimes it was difficult to distinguish them from each other. For the record, Prince Felix was also a famous part-time cross-dresser, performing anonymously in louche cabarets.
Griffiths imagined the Yusupovs not at the height of the grandeur of their splendid lifestyle as Russian aristocrats, but as if visited by the ghosts of an incumbent future: the overwhelming innovation of constructivism and modernism about to happen at that time, Malevich and the impactful abstract art he promoted with its powerful graphic symbols of a new purity, both conceptual and visual. This contrast was what appealed to Griffiths; in the collection he subtly represented the tension between opulence and rigor, romanticism and modernity.
A good example of the contrasting dynamic at play was a tunic in camel double cashmere which had a rather severe, neo-constructivist, ’20s-inspired straight-cut line; it was softened by a ruffled, handkerchief-hemmed skirt in golden fil coupé worn underneath. Along the same lines, the coveted Max Mara teddy bear coat, made in pure camel hair, was proposed tossed over a diaphanous slip dress in ruched lamé. Ceremonial uniforms inspired the antique-looking golden braids contouring the lapels of a white tuxedo jumpsuit, or nicely trimming a square-cut, loose dress in black chiffon. Knitwear patterns on an elongated cardi coat nodded to traditional geometric Russian motifs; and a softly cut tunic in milky white silk was printed with romantic faded bouquets of roses, reminiscent of the ornate floral tapestries found in the Yusupov palace. One can only imagine what it would’ve been like to actually see the collection come alive in all that magnificent palatial splendor.
