Quiet luxury has been the position fashion brands have been scrambling to claim for the past two years, but Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths took a defiant and celebratory stance with his collection, shown in Venice on Tuesday night.
“Quiet Luxury Has Arrived [such] “On the scale of an epidemic, it’s complete silence and nobody says a thing,” Griffiths said before the show. “I’ve always been a bit opposed to the idea of quiet luxury anyway, because you don’t know how quiet it is. How quiet is it going to be if you walk into a room dressed completely in camel from head to toe?”
Presented on the portico of the Doge’s Palace overlooking St. Mark’s Square, the resort collection was rich in Max Mara’s signature camel hue, but eschewed simplicity for instead, embellished with sequins, brocades and shimmering jacquard silks, evoking the sumptuous Fortuny fabrics made famous by the lagoon, which Griffiths calls “the cradle of luxury.”
Inspired by Venetian merchant Marco Polo, who recorded his travels through Mongolia, China, India and Africa, Griffiths staged the show to mark 700 years since his death and to celebrate the city as “the founder of this vast global trading empire.” [and] The beauty of intercultural mixing that can be found here.”
Despite its glamorous history, Griffiths says it wasn’t a period piece. “The key was to create contemporary costumes,” he says, adding that “Venice style is not as extravagant as you might think.”
This was evident in miniature embroidered shift dresses, sharp tailoring, chunky knits and open-neck shirts with sporty necklines, many of which were cinched in with woven tassel belts that recalled the jewels depicted in the paintings of Venetian masters Titian and Tintoretto, along with the loose-fitting camel coat that Max Mara has made its mark on for the past seven decades and that new generations of fans continue to covet.
“I literally wear their coats all winter long,” said British TV presenter and model Alexa Chung, who was in the front row, adding that Max Mara “solves problems without you having to think about them, is gorgeous, [brand]”
Now in his 37th year at the 75-year-old Reggio Emilia-based brand, Griffiths is one of the few designers to boast an illustrious tenure at a luxury fashion house and a firm grasp on the brand’s future, which he says is focused on cultivating a younger customer base.
“For my own sanity, I want to talk to younger people. I’m much happier talking to younger people, certainly people my own age,” he said.
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Griffiths never lost the creative fire of his youth as a clubber in 1980s London, and here he directly expressed that passion for the first time, collaborating with a textile graduate to recreate prints from a 1985 sketchbook from his time studying fine art at Manchester Polytechnic, while also realising a lifelong dream of working with milliner Stephen Jones, whose work he admired at the time.
Their presence served as a reminder of the importance of timelessness, with Griffith and Max Mara being its two most famous judges.
“It’s good to be trendy, but what happens if you’re not? If you have a product that’s relevant, whether it’s trendy or not, you’re in a much healthier place,” he said. “It’s not just about being successful in the next 18 months or five years. Our future lies in being consistently appealing while still having an element of trendiness. It would be a mistake for the whole brand to suddenly jump from one ship to the fashion ship. That’s not where we come from, that’s not where we’re at. It’s a very dangerous game in the long term.”
