Max Mara sets the new workwear rules at Milan Fashion Week
Over the last decade, designers have competed at ever-increasing speeds to deliver more collections, more catwalk shows, more financial results.
Ian Griffiths, creative director at the Italian heritage house Max Mara, says that the global lockdown offered a “liberating” chance to reset - and the resulting spring collection which he showed to a limited audience in Milan, and a wider audience online, today felt refreshed and revived for it.
“We were able to focus on the joy of doing the work, rather than the end result,” he explains. “I started this collection the day after lockdown [in the UK], not knowing initially whether or not it would be realised, and definitely not knowing whether there would be a catwalk show at the end of it all. So it became about enjoying the process. It made the process feel less pressurised than it normally would and more enjoyable. It’s a liberating experience to let go and recognise that you can't be in control of everything and you have to accept fate sometimes.”
Derbyshire-raised Griffiths spent lockdown at his country cottage home in Suffolk, coordinating designers scattered between Milan, Paris and London over Zoom calls. It had only been a week or so since the Max Mara team had presented its catwalk collection for this autumn to an audience of hundreds, and all had retreated to their home cities for a break - not realising that it meant they would be stuck in said locations for three months.
It was a lockdown clear out of his home library that inspired Griffiths to develop a new renaissance mood.
“I realised that I had loads of books on Italian Renaissance painting,” he says “ I thought, perhaps it will be something of a new renaissance, after all this is over. I also thought about the Italian fashion industry’s concept of bella figura, which is the idea that fashion allows you to present your best self on all occasions. I thought about a woman rediscovering the joy of getting dressed after lockdown.”
The joy can be found in the silver brocade blouson cuffs on sweatshirt tops, and the sky blue leather pouch necklaces for those who might still not fancy carrying a proper bag by next spring. The fabrics used throughout looked rich but soft, the proportions of suits were relaxed with fluid trousers. The notion that we’ve all spent the last three months wearing sweatpants had been toyed with and elevated, as drawstring and ruching details were worked into everything from cotton maxi dresses to return to the office-ready jackets.
“To present restrictive uncomfortable clothes just would not be realistic, the experience that we had has changed the way we view clothes,” Griffiths acknowledges. “But I think the notion that people are going to return to basic dressing is erroneous because now, if people want to buy any clothes at all, they want to buy special clothes that make them feel good. They might be going to the office for only two days a week instead of five, so now those two days feel more like an event and they take pleasure in thinking about what they’re going to wear for those days. We’re rediscovering the joy of getting dressed.”
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