"Now we're feeling a cooler Scandinavian vibe," creative director Ian Griffiths commented on the choice of show location
Since 2015, Max Mara has staged runway shows all around the world. In recent years, the Italian house has toured New York, London, Shanghai and Reggio Emilia – the locale of its headquarters. In 2019, Ian Griffiths invited show-goers to Berlin, hosting its 2020 Cruise show inspired by Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie in the Neues Museum. In 2021, it brought guests to the island of Ischia, overlooking the Gulf of Naples, for a show that referenced Truman Capote’s Swans.
Just last June, Max Mara presented its Resort collection in Lisbon. Models dressed in designs derived from the enigmatic “socialist socialite” Natália Correia strode through the garden of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. “If she didn’t exist, I couldn’t have made her up,” Griffiths told me over coffee in Lisbon at the time, just hours ahead of the show. “There couldn’t have been a more well-suited woman to be a Max Mara muse.”
Creative director Ian Griffiths. Photo: Max Mara
The next stop on the brand’s peripatetic journey is Stockholm, Sweden. “For the past two years, our resort collections have explored a south European aesthetic with shows in Ischia and Lisbon,” Griffiths told the press. “Now we’re feeling a cooler Scandinavian vibe.”
While it may come as a surprise to some, for Vogue Scandinavia it feels like the natural next step for the brand. Having opened its first owned-and-operated stores in the autumn of 2022, there’s a fairly tangible link between the Italian luxury label and the Nordics.
Max Mara Resort 2023.
Max Mara Resort 2023.
Max Mara Resort 2023.
Add a strong roster of Scandinavian clients (The 101801 coat became a firm favourite of Ingrid Bergman, for example) and a past collection directly inspired by Nordic icons (the Italian heritage brand’s 2017 autumn/winter collection was based on Swedish icons Ingrid Bergman and Anita Ekberg. “It was definitely a Scandi collection,” Griffiths told Vogue Scandinavia), and Max Mara’s long history is lined with a surprisingly Scandinavian savoir-faire.
There is yet to be a word on the location in Stockholm. However, we’re expecting somewhere sophisticated with an artistic edge from Max Mara, whose founding Maramotti family are some of Italy’s most substantial art collectors. And we’re marking our calendars for the occasion.
Max Mara’s Resort 2024 collection will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 11 2023.