VISIONS OF SPRING-SUMMER 2022
GLOBAL fashion brand Max Mara imagines a writer—a smart, sulky, Beat Generation intellectual tapping out the story of a long hot summer on an old-school typewriter. It’s a sophisticated account of romance, intrigue, moral conundrum and elegant ennui, played out against a background of smart villas, secluded beaches, fast cars, boats, chic restaurants and casinos.
Françoise Quoirez was such a writer. An ungovernable teenager, a devotee of Proust, Stendhal, Gide and Camus, she was twice expelled from school (once for hanging a bust of Molière). Under the nom de plume Françoise Sagan, her imaginary summer materialized as Bonjour Tristesse, the literary masterpiece which rocked the societal status quo. And the film of the book, directed by Otto Preminger, was hailed as a supreme cinematic achievement.
The story’s protagonist, Cécile, gets to enjoy all the hedonistic and glamorous pastimes the author would have lived out on a real vacation. Max Mara dissects the sartorial persona of a Cécile: the bourgeois rebel. Sagan’s own style, easy beatnik chic, points to workwear classics—the fisherman’s smock, the laborer’s jacket, the mechanic’s overalls and carpenter pants are reimagined with prêtà-porter finesse. In crisp gabardine, canvas, impeccable poplin and boxfresh denim, they feature precise contrast top stitching. Tank tops and boyish sandals with chunky crêpe soles complete the bad girl look; chiffon embroidered with wispy feathers is a diaphanous counterpoint.
The color palette runs from sand to tan, to navy to black, but there are pops of orange and yellow too.
“We’re all existentialists now,” declare the pundits of modern philosophical thinking. Certainly, over the last year and a half, we’ve learned a thing or two about exploring our inner freedom, just like Sagan. To Max Mara, that sounds like exactly the right mix of high powered cerebral acrobatics and voluptuary indulgence for a very fine summer.