Fashion scene over the years has evolved into a circus of fashion, where the destination of the fashion show functions like an advertising campaign – a living exhibit that encapsulates the vibe and thoughts of the designer for the collection. On that account, Max Mara brought their Resort 2019 collection to their hometown of Reggio Emilia, Italy, as an artistic tribute to the maison’s first factory and headquarters-turned-art collecting space, Collezione Maramotti.

Max Mara Retraces Footsteps Back to Home for Resort 2019

The Collezione Maramotti museum displays a span of priceless works by contemporary Italian artists from Piero Manzoni and Alberto Burri to Pino Pascali and Jannis Kounellis, the ideal backdrop for Max Mara’s creative director Ian Griffiths to turn the avant garde art movement into inspiration. These are the artists that speak in bold gestures and inspired the tactile, deconstructed and raw-edge of modern fashion. According to Griffiths, “I know that this is a precious location for the Maramotti family, very dear to them, and I am honoured to be showing here for the first time. It’s a great challenge for me, and I wanted to create a collection that would be worthy of the venue.”

“I love the idea of taking something that is an absolute classic and doing one thing to it that changes how you can wear it,” – Ian Griffiths

As a long-planned homage to the founder, Griffiths conceived a lineup of sophisticated designs that is a riff on some of Max Mara’s strongest vintage garments, retouched with subtle references of the Maramotti art collection. Case in point, the opening and closing looks were modern adoptions of the 101801 camel coat that was first sketched by Anne Marie Beretta in 1981. Today, Griffiths reproduced the design in black and white, tailored into a cape-inspired overcoat that echoes the delicately stratified burlap of Alberto Burri’s “Sacco E Rosso”.

The rest of the collection features irregular plissé on pants, bodices, and blouses, or transplanted into slouchily tactile leather bags, inspired by a Piero Manzoni, or the work of Manzoni etched in the typographic and handwritten prints, and ruffles that translated a Maramotti-owned Burri piece. Where it started in 1951 with Achille Maramotti presenting his modernist structure as Max Mara’s identity, Griffiths paint a portrait of the house, defined by his coats to tell the story of the long-established Italian house.