A cigar-brown wrap skirt was held at the left thigh by leather straps substantial enough to loosen or cinch while wearing mittens on the deck of a wave-struck schooner. A rose-toned, silk-linen tailored jacket with matching shorts came layered under an open-backed hunter’s gilet armed with bellows pockets roomy enough to stash a brace of grouse. A storm-flapped, floor-length trench in crisply finished nut-brown was big enough to bivouac in.
“We’re developing this concept of utility luxe, which is a narrative that has existed within Max Mara since it was founded,” said Ian Griffiths before this morning’s show. “We’re taking the icons of the utility wardrobe—the utility vest, the cargo vest, the trench coat, and the safari jacket—as tokens of that.”
Griffiths’s utilitarian gestures were not designed for sailing, shooting, or camping. Instead their role was to telegraph readiness and leisure within what was more broadly a highly cosmopolitan wardrobe. Jumpsuits and flight jackets were crafted in sheer organza to signal both adventurousness and sensuality, a blend of Hepburn and Bacall.
Skirts and pants sat high on the waist, fixed by wide practical belts that swept down to the floor with assertive fullness. Bellows pockets on blazers, gilets, and safari jackets suggested a countrywoman headed downtown from upstate. Griffiths’s focus on utility jumped from appearance to sensation in a final section of bias-cut evening wear in knit. Some of these full fine-gauge looks combined the impact of a dress with the practicality of separates.
Griffiths said: “I think the word luxury is used very lazily, and it confuses fashion completely. And if you said that the definition of luxury is something that you don’t really need which costs a lot of money, then Max Mara wouldn’t be luxury by that definition. Max Mara is what you want in your daily life.” This was luxury that looked highly satisfying to use.
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