Max Mara feted its 75th anniversary with its latest cruise collection in a fashion trifecta that managed to combine a store, history-embracing installation and elegiac clothes, to blend empowerment with haut de gamme elegance in a rainy Shanghai on Tuesday evening. Attracting a novel array of stars from Michelle Yeoh to ambassador Maud Apatow, the show was staged inside the Long Museum, the city’s most important private art museum founded by billionaire It Couple Liu Yqian and his Wife Wang Wei.
It brought to a climax the international cruise runway season which began six weeks ago with Chanel in Biarritz, before passing through LA’s LACMA, and NYC’s Time Square and Frick Museum in big budget displays by mega labels Dior, Gucci and Louis Vuitton. And it was the latest Max Mara cruise show to be staged in a museum, following on from 2019 in Berlin’s Neues Museum and 2024 in Venice’s Doge Palace.
Designed by architect Liu Yichun of Atelier Deshau, The Long Museum was officially opened in December 2012 and is built inside a former coal depot. Alone among these high-impact marques, Max Mara also staged a 12-day historic story-telling exhibition called The ! Max – edited by notable French fashion curator Olivier Saillard.
All 12,000 tickets to The ! Max were sold weeks ago. “It’s an exhibition which juxtaposes heterogeneous objects and invites the visitor to make connections between them and figure out why they’re there, with sketches, sewing machines, lamps, chairs, machinery, and equipment, as well as garments themselves,” noted Max Mara’s creative director Ian Griffiths in an Elite Traveler exclusive preview of the collection.
Atypically for Griffiths, whose cruise collections often reference very local inspirations – from the golden era Italian cinema actresses in the 1950s in last year’s show in Naples, to the birth of luxury the previous year in Venice – this show focused on the essence of Max Mara. “For me, Max Mara is essentially a woman who works in the city, lives in the city, who wants to engage with the city. And where else do you get that sense of modernity, or a megalopolis with greater energy than Shanghai,” said Griffiths, in a suite in the Waldorf Astoria. He was sitting in front of a mood board that included a quote from American humorist Patricia Marks: “New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn’t even sit down.”
The hotel itself sums up the kinetic energy of the Chinese commercial capital. Built in two eras: a swish modern neo-classical 25-story skyscraper on one side, and the original pre-World War Two wing, containing the legendarily louche Long Bar, where a jazz band still plays every night. The heart of the collection was a series of really remarkable coats, from flowing plenipotentiary lapel-free looks to the star of the show, The Teddy Coat – an enveloping knubby wool coat that came in multiple colors such as burgundy, russet, beige and brine.
In another first, Griffiths included a trio of men’s looks – in recognition of how Max Mara’s iconic outerwear pieces have made their way into men’s wardrobes. “Women borrowing from the boyfriend’s wardrobe – coats, jackets or trousers has been going on since Diane Keaton invented the Annie Hall look. But this is the first time ever that you see men borrowing from the female wardrobe. From a camel hair coat to cashmere,” he claimed.
Worn by an entirely Asian cast, the evening looks focused on sequined or color-blocking cocktail dresses and superb knotted and bowed dresses. Griffiths also riffed on Chinese motifs, with modern linear Cheongsams and multiple examples of cloth Asian fastenings, featuring a series of looks in bold, fiery reds – a favorite Chinese color. The clothes all felt extremely empowering, expressing a certain chic-yet-pragmatic feminism in fashion.
“I never say Max Mara empowers women because that’s very patronizing, especially coming from a man. Max Mara doesn’t do that. We provide women with the tools that perhaps they need to empower themselves. That was the idea of our founder Achille Maramotti,” the UK-born Griffiths said.
Based in Reggio Emilia, Max Mara is still fully owned by the Maramotti family. Last year, the group – which includes Marina Rinaldi, Weekend Max Mara, and Sport Max – broke through annual sales of €1.9 billion, with the Max Mara brand accounting for 70 percent of turnover. In China, where the group boasts some 245 stores, it has notably ridden out the current dip in Chinese luxury consumption.
There was little sense of spending restraint at the show or museum. Financed by one of China’s richest businessmen, Liu Yqian, an art collector who in 2015 paid $170 million for Amedeo Modigliani’s painting of a reclining nude, Nu couché, at Christie’s in New York. It was the second highest price paid for an artwork at auction (and reportedly paid with Liu’s American Express Centurion Card). The Maramotti clan are no slouches when it comes to collecting either. Their Collezione Maramotti, opened to the public in 2007, contains works by Anselm Keifer, Claudio Parmiggiani, Peter Halley, Alberto Burri, and Carlo Mollino.
“Personally, I think there’s something essential and beautiful about the contrast between a cashmere coat and a brutalist concrete structure. That’s Max Mara in the city,” enthused Griffiths. Very much a fashion intellectual, Griffiths likes to quote the German philosopher Walter Benjamin and sought inspiration previously from dynamic women: Marilyn Monroe, Fran Liebowitz, Colette, Lee Miller, Dorothy Parker, or even Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Born in the North of England, Ian partied in the famed Hacienda club of Manchester back in the 80s. He first came to Italy sporting Ziggy Stardust orange hair. Now, after 30 years at Max Mara, he wears Savile Row suits with moccasins and still sketches every look in Max Mara shows. Quietly and relatively under the radar, Griffiths has become the most successful English fashion designer in Continental Europe. And this perfectly judged show made clear the reason for his success.
Among the objects carefully placed in the exhibition were Gae Aulenti’s famed Pipistrello lamp and wonderful tubular chair, both used in the very first Max Mara Milan office back in 1964. The exhibition also included the original sewing machine of founder Achille and even a humble, small iron placed before a bunch of pattern-cut looks.
The installation was built by the firm of Marco Balich, the Italian show producer who is busy staging four World Cup 2026 events, including the final in Giants Stadium, New Jersey, on July 19. The boutique featured a series of great coats, heritage foulards and novel T-shirts, in the latest example of Griffiths’ ability to self-edit and reduce to the max. The essential DNA of Max Mara.
