Brand known for no-nonsense style and camel coats channels the glamour and poverty of the city in Italian cinema
M
ax Mara is known for its deep-pile camel coats and conservative northern Italian style. But in tune with the times, this season’s show at the baroque Palace of Caserta outside Naples opened with a pair of very short shorts.
Tight and high-waisted, the vibe was Vogue but the inspiration was the 1949 Italian realist film Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice) and a 19-year-old Italian actor, Silvana Mangano, in a paddy field wearing damp shorts and stockings, which ended up on global billboards.
“Cinema was the thing that really took Italian style into people’s lives, and where Italian style was effectively invented,” said Ian Griffiths, Max Mara’s designer. “But afterwards, Silvana said she didn’t know her image would be so sexualised, and she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it”, he said. “So, I wanted to take this image, and look at how the position of women, real women, had changed”, he said. “The idea is to give [women] something they want to wear, or at least to aspire to.”
