“New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn’t even sit down,” once mused Patricia Marx, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer, of Shanghai’s restlessness. The quote, which aptly captured a certain “kinetic” spirit, inspired Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths to stage his resort 2027 collection in the Chinese city.
The collection, which also commemorates the brand’s 75th anniversary, brought together modernist motifs, traditional Chinese influences and Max Mara’s signature styles — including its various classic camel coats — in looks that Griffiths further characterized as “snappy” and “dynamic.”
Set against the backdrop of Shanghai’s Long Museum, a Brutalist building designed by the Chinese art collector couple Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, the archtypical Max Mara woman was seen strutting along the building’s vaulted corridors in slingback stilettos while engaged in a perpetual conversation with archival styles that animated the space.
The runway design, which emulated a museum’s repository, will continue to exist until June 28, where “The Max!” exhibition — curated by Olivier Saillard — remaps the company’s history via a playful display of the brand’s most iconic garments, documents, textiles, imagery, artworks and design furniture across nine chapters.
With an all-Chinese cast, the resort collection wove together a refined wardrobe that highlighted polished daywear with nuanced Chinese flavors.
For Griffiths, the initial idea sprang from a pinstriped cheongsam that was tailor-made for him in Hong Kong some years ago. Reworking the style with a modernist twist, the designer took “fragments” of the trope, in particular the asymmetrical fastening line across the chest and knotted closures, and reworked them into classic Western styles, including silk shirting, crisp white button-downs, little black dresses and stately sequined jackets. Often styled with leather opera gloves and a deconstructed obi belt, and oversize scarves, the looks carried a disciplined sensuality with cinematic appeal.
To further enhance the wearer’s assertive stride, signature wool overcoats came with exaggerated proportions. This time, the Teddy returned with a majestic shawl collar that stole the show, so did an elongated blue coat with a high collar that looked like a changshan, or Chinese long gown. Elsewhere, a wool trench in military olive, layered over a double-breasted pantsuit, played up the Hollywood influence, as did a hooded caramel jacket with kimono sleeves.
The result, which Griffiths called “a completely international” style, was an experiment in solving “Eurocentric modernity” as described by Walter Benjamin, whose writing Griffiths has been ruminating on of late.
“I wanted to demonstrate that modernism doesn’t need to mean a sort of flattening of style or reduction in the meaning of things,” Griffiths added.
Max Mara’s signature coats were also shown on three male models, a gesture Griffiths said was meant to acknowledge its growing Asian male audience discovering the brand through womenswear.
“Whenever I come here, I’m staggered to see how many young men, sometimes not so young, are wearing Max Mara, and we wanted to recognize that,” Griffiths said.
However, the idea of a Max Mara men’s collection is out of the question.
“We don’t plan to start a separate menswear line, because in a sense, on an ideological level, it would be a kind of betrayal to the Max Mara woman to give men the same advantage,” Griffiths said of the recognizable Max Mara garment first created in the 1980s.
Off the runway, three additional archival styles — the Meridian, Millenia, and Metric — refined and made lighter through advanced production techniques, will be available for purchase at the museum’s bookshop and at select stores worldwide.
For Griffiths, whose take on Hollywood glamour informed a significant part of the collection, his muses run the gamut from Marilyn Monroe to Fran Lebowitz.
“We usually nominate a particular muse, but we wanted to make it about all the muses we’ve actually referenced over the years — women who have in some way formed a composition of the Max Mara woman,” Griffiths said.
Without being self-referential or overtly nostalgic, Griffiths also wanted to bring forth the idea of Max Mara as “a kind of Bauhaus of fashion.”
“In the sense that he [Achille Maramotti, Max Mara’s founder] wanted it to be about quality, but not simply quality of manufacture or materials, but quality of design and the quality of the idea itself. He also wanted an element of accessibility, which means not simply economic accessibility, but the accessibility of ideas — ones that people can look at and feel,” Griffiths added.
The Shanghai event was the second time the brand has staged a show in the city, and the third time in China.
In 2008, Max Mara held its spring 2009 collection and Sportmax collections runway show at Beijing’s Water Dam. At the time, it also staged a retrospective dubbed “Coats!” of 30 coats styled on models donning Chinese dresses and ornamental hair pieces.
In 2016, the brand showed its pre-fall and capsule collection in Shanghai, which was designed in collaboration with the Chinese artist Liu Wei.
Max Mara’s Tuesday resort show unfolded as a family affair with celebrity guests including Katie Holmes, Michelle Yeoh, Maude Apatow, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Eileen Gu, Ming Xi, Ye Tong, Tan Yuanyuan and Zhang Kangle.
Post-show, the brand planned to host a re-see at the venue for its local and international clients.
The runway setup will exist as an exhibition open to the public from Wednesday to June 28. Visitors are able to register for a slot on the brand’s WeChat Mini Program.
In addition, the museum bookstore has been transformed into a pop-up store with a giant teddy bear with an edited assortment of garments and exhibition merchandise.
