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Max Mara

Fall 2023 RTW

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Properties

Date: February 23, 2023
Location: Milan, Italy
Looks: 40
Brand: Max Mara
URL: wwd.com

Critic Reviews

By Miles Socha for WWD

The personal Instagram account of Max Mara’s Ian Griffiths promises “all the latest from Camelandia.” His fall collection for the Italian brand synonymous with camel coats was cheekily titled “the Camelocracy.”

One of fashion’s longest-serving creative directors continues to find many new things to say with camel coats, this season shown rakishly hanging off one shoulder and held in place with a leather crossbody strap sheltered inside. (He also had versions in pale teal, raspberry and lavender.)

The press notes would have you imagining aristocratic French physicist Émilie du Châtelet disguising herself as a “gentleman en déshabillé with a soft swagger of an overcoat” in order to get into “the male-only coffee houses and engage with the top minds” during the Age of Reason.

Or you could see modern practicality.

“How many times do you find yourself in a gallery or at a shopping mall where you feel too hot?” Griffiths asked backstage, arguing that some 18th-century ideas can find agency today.

There’s not much of an argument for bringing back pannier skirts, Watteau backs and corsets, though the latter looked pretty cool quilted in nylon or velvet poking out of elephant-leg pants.

But all these elements, along with grosgrain ribbons tied onto ponytails, added a romantic quality to the familiar blanket coats in teddy-bear fluff, the mannish tailoring and utility parkas in camel nylon. “Something to dream about,” Griffiths offered.

Max Mara staged its cruise show last year in the gardens of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal, and the brand funded the restoration of its galleries dedicated to the French Enlightenment. That got Griffiths curious about the period and led him to du Châtelet, whose translation of and commentary on the work of Isaac Newton won over the French scientific establishment.

“Her great forte as a woman was that with Newton, and with Voltaire, she improved their work,” he marveled.

Griffith joins a growing clutch of designers who shed light on underappreciated badass women from science and the arts — and he’s proving that historical figures and Max Mara make fine bedfellows. Recall that for Max Mara’s winning spring 2023 collection, he paid tribute to the timeless Riviera style of Renée Perle, the lover and frequent subject of French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue.

Perhaps Griffiths should next research some inspiring women around the court associated with the legendary King Arthur — if only so he can call the collection Camelot.

By Luke Leitch for Vogue

“What’s the relevance of the 18th century to today?” That was the question that began Ian Griffiths’s journey towards today’s runway answer at Max Mara. To find it, Griffiths engaged his tried and tested creative protocol of fixing upon one historically sidelined but contemporaneously central female creative from the period he was scrutinizing to act as a personification of his thesis. In this case it was Émilie du Châtelet, a burningly intelligent French marquess mathematician who translated Isaac Newton into French—correcting a few of Newton’s errors on the way—and was for years passionately beloved by Voltaire (although he ended up with his widowed niece).

Griffiths seized upon du Châtelet as emblematic of a period of enlightenment in which female intelligence was increasingly acknowledged by the patriarchy, even as the female wardrobe remained constricting, apotropaic, and controlled. He said: “the fashion at the time was completely not enlightened. So I was imagining how she might have dressed if she had freedom to and how that would translate into today.” He also self-referred, as he on occasion does via Instagram, to consider his own club kid days as a New Romantic—a subculture that seized upon the Baroque in order to evolve from the less humorous, sans culotte sensibility of punk.

That meticulous scene-setting translated into a Max Mara collection that was newly romantic. It either adapted 18th century menswear pieces, like the opening teddy banyan coat, or modernized 18th century womenswear—like look six’s miniaturized pannier skirt in camel brocade with a fishtail detail at the back hem. A long rib knit dress coat and a trio of teddy coats were worn slung over the right shoulder courtesy of an inbuilt strap, which Griffiths said was a contemporary military styling trick, but for men only. Pannier pockets were also used to bolster a double-fronted gray cashmere tunic dress—more officer material—and a black brocade skirt worn over a patent corset belt and a sheer top. Evening pieces came with detachable Watteau backs.

Griffiths offered Max Mara versions of contemporary paradigm garments that included a dreamy camel parka, a full length liner coat, and a velvet bomber with frogging. Some models teamed their lug-soled boots with shorts. This was not a wardrobe Émilie du Châtelet would have recognized, but she would, you suspect, have been into it.