Post-pandemic, the majority of designers have amped up the sass and spangle, embracing wholeheartedly the opportunity to design for a restriction-free life.
This morning in Milan however, Maxmara’s creative director Ian Griffiths delivered one of his cosiest collections to date, an ultra-tactile wardrobe of fuzzy, furry, cocooning and quilted pieces made for real world wear.
The material the brand uses for its teddy coats was for example extended onto sweet and supremely strokeable teddy shorts, skirts, dresses. “Who knew? Who knew?” joked Griffiths post-show. “I mean we knew it made a great coat but who knew it made a great skirt or pair of shorts?”
And indeed these fuzzy shorts and minis looked great paired with loose-fit bomber jackets and the brand’s new over-the-knee crepe-soled knitted boots, which had a second-skin-like ease of wear. And ease was certainly the point, albeit with a fabulous spark: “How can we motivate people to want to invest in our world if there isn’t a sense of magic there,” said Griffiths, who had a diverse cast of models of different ages and ethnicities, plus the Hadids.
“I think particularly with what we have been through for the last two years and what we are still going through, people are going to continue to look for a sense of magic.”
Griffiths found his magical inspiration at the Tate Modern last autumn, when he saw a major retrospective of Sophie Taeuber-Arp, one of the foremost abstract artists and designers of the 1920s and 30s. It was Griffiths’ first exhibition post-lockdown and also the first time a Taeuber-Arp retrospective had hit UK shores. Despite her pivotal contribution to art and design (via textiles, paintings, sculptures, architecture and dancing), the Dadaist movement pioneer was all but forgotten for 30 years.
“What I recognised in her work was the ability to fuse modernisn – which is all about rationalism and pragmatism – with almost a sense of folkloristic, fairytale magic. And that was precisely the ingredient that I wanted to inject into this collection,” said Griffiths, whose AW22 vision featured mohair sweaters in graphic Dad-esque prints and plays on volume and proportion inspired by the costumes and puppets the Swiss artist would make for the recitals and readings she and her fellow Dadaists (among them Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst and Guillaume Apollinaire) would perform nightly at Cabaret Voltaire in Munich. Super-wide leg trousers and bell-shaped maxi skirts sat alongside micro minis poking out from giant fuzzy hoodies.
Maxmara’s famously good coats were of course seen throughout, with floor-length puffer jackets (whose padding was upcycled from the waste material from the brand’s Teddy coat production) thrown over teddy coats a particularly storm-friendly styling trick. Knit bonnets and salopette-type nylon trousers also smacked of alpine-dressing.
It was ultimately all endlessly wearable – whether for the street or the slopes – and had a comforting, approachable appeal.
“If you stay within the world of reality, you can hope to create a rapport with someone watching the show, that they can see themselves reflected in the show, and that’s what I’m always trying to do with a Maxmara show,” said Griffiths. “I’m holding a mirror saying this is who you are, or its who you could be, its within your grasp. It’s aspirational but its also achievable.
