Max Mara does Posh Punk, and looks ahead to Dubai

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Feb 22, 2018

The latest salutary lesson on how to stage a classy fashion show and manage your brand from Max Mara, who created a Posh Punk collection that, ironically, was all about dressing the new contemporary career girl.

Hair extensions worthy of Siouxsie and Banshees sprouted out of heads of most models in this show, staged early Thursday morning in a wet Milan, albeit in an nightclub atmosphere of a darkened set inside the massive courtyard of Palazzo Serbelloni.
 
Though the collection was very much targeted at working women; marvelous swirling tops coats in creamy cashmere and forgiving manly double-breasted boardroom jackets.

Made in a perfectly judged palette of anthracite houndstooth, shadowy chalk-stripe and deep caramel Prince of Wales, the coats – always the key to Max Mara – were cut with immense authority. Adding to the counter-culture mood, many were fringed on the sleeves and shoulder.
 
Max Mara is also one label that never skimps on costs either. That was clear from their casting. With Gigi Hadid, Doutzen Kroes and Lara Stone opening the action in a series of fantastic leopard and cheetah print tops, coats and elongated jodhpurs. The cast made up with coal-rimmed eyes to add to the seductive mood; heightened by the faintly S&M punk straps that finished the body-hugging dresses and pencil skirts.
 
Adding to the youthful mood, a great series of T-shirts based on designs by artist François Berthoud, wonderful sketches of optimistic faces.
 
Max Mara is also a brand that thinks out of the box, like in its Coats! exhibition of 60 years of Italian fashion, which it staged last year in Korea, coupled with a runway show inside the Zaha Hadid-designed Dongdaemun Design Plaza.
 
Next stop: the house is looking forward to Dubai in late 2018.
 
“Our goal is to communicate with art, creativity and culture. Not just the clothes. That’s the way we are now thinking about Max Maxa. And why we are going to Dubai,” CEO Luigi Maramotti told FashionNetwork.com, as the coiffed audience exited into a steady Lombardo drizzle.
 
The Max Mara executive also revealed that the house will developed a series of more modest looks targeted at the Middle Eastern market, including some hijabs. Cashmere with class and culture.