SEOUL ORIGIN
The Italian house of Max Mara is known for its iconic coats and heritage Italian craftsmanship, but its constant forays into far-flung parts of the world – this time South Korea – keeps it forever young. By Alice Birrell.
Max Mara is known for its Italian craftsmanship, but its constant forays into far-flung parts of the world, like South Korea, keeps it forever young.
“HE WAS A very curious man and I think that he would be very, very interested in Seoul,” Maria Giulia Maramotti muses of her grandfather and founder of the Max Mara brand, Achille Maramotti. We are seated in the newly opened Duccio Grassi-designed Max Mara flagship store, rendered in Ceppo stone with gleaming brass finishes, in the South Korean capital’s humming Gangnam district, cars inching by on the wide boulevard outside. The scene is worlds apart from the cobbled streets and constellation of terracotta buildings of Reggio Emilia, the ancient Roman town in the north of Italy where the label was founded and is still based. “He was very open to evolution. He was never nostalgic,” continues the label’s scion, and vice-president of Max Mara’s US retail operations and global brand ambassador.
Achille was not only the founder, in 1951, of one of the world’s first luxury ready-to-wear brands produced at scale, but a famously avid art collector – the Collezione Maramotti sitting just outside Reggio Emilia is, to this day, a staggeringly modern collection of important Italian art. It is this spirit that Maria Giulia stridently carries forth, as part of her role in taking the brand to the world. Her remit is to answer questions such as: ‘Why should bright young things in South Korea relate to the heft of Italian craftsmanship and camel coats, one style of which, the canonised 101801, has not changed in over 30 years?”
“I’m wearing a white suit to the event,” Korean actress and model Claudia Kim says. “Maria and I both love our suits.” With a world of choice at her fingertips, she cites the label’s tailoring as a first choice for cut, comfort and elegance. “It’s the perfect balance of femininity and masculinity.” At the opening of the store that evening, she joins celebrities and musicians like Canadian Henry Lau, who has an intimidatingly large support base in Korea; model Irene Kim; Korean actress Ji-hye Han; and long-time friend of the brand Carolyn Murphy, who has flown in for the occasion.
Kim voices another reason she’s loyal to the label. “Behind the scenes, there are women, including Maria Giulia, who make working with the brand far more enjoyable,” she says. “Max Mara as a women’s advocate is empowering, encouraging and brings together women … There are many difficulties [I face] as an individual, a minority, and as someone from an Asian culture, but thanks to these women’s movements, there are more opportunities for people like myself.”
She’s referring in part to the house’s ongoing Women in Film awards, whose past winners include Katie Holmes, Zoe Saldana and Australia’s Elizabeth Debicki. There is also the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, which awards emerging female artists in the UK. Maria Giulia is keyed into both, inheriting her grandfather’s love of art. When she comes to Seoul – which is often (she calls it “avant garde”) – she visits the Leeum museum of art, home to works by Mark Rothko, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder and Anish Kapoor, or the beguiling Korea Furniture Museum which, with its flared tiled roofs and serene garden perched on a Seoul hillside, is more scintillating than the functional name suggests.
It is all inspirational fodder, and feeds back into her role nudging the label into the now. She addresses relevancy by devising digital campaigns and projects with women, from influencers to motherand-daughter duos, to recast classics like the 101801. “Historically [Max Mara] has been based on the untouchable, the glamour; it was hidden and all within this curtain – not discoverable. All of a sudden, it was discoverable, it was accessible.” She points to other blue-chip brands ( she doesn’t name them) trading on sneaker culture, sweatpants and caps to appeal to generations Y and Z, which isn’t and, she says, won’t ever be part of the Max Mara language.
“In our case, it’s a little bit more complicated than that,” she points out. “We knew that we had some aces in our hands, because we have icons. The thing with our icons is that obviously it’s a different investment, but also it has a different longevity.”
She is looking instead to leverage timelessness and value, alternate points of appeal for younger generations. “When you are a brand that has a longevity such as ours and such a strong DNA and history, that becomes the message that you want to say. The idea of craftsmanship, the idea of value and quality, that is something that you have to say.”
It’s fitting that Carolyn Murphy has a storied relationship with the brand, shooting some of its earlier campaigns with Mario Sorrenti and Steven Meisel and, more recently, walking in the resort ’20 show. She is both an enduring icon and a classically inclined shopper. “Every time people come over [to my home] they say: ‘This is it, this is all you have?’ It’s because I know what I like,” she says the morning before the store opening, dressed head-to-toe in varying shades of Max Mara camel, butterscotch and tawny tan.
“It makes getting dressed much easier,” she continues. “I’m not consuming as much and that’s also a big thing for me.” The environment has always been a chief concern. “I sought out the wellness route in about 1995. I was living in the Meatpacking district and I had been a vegetarian on and off my whole life,” she recalls of the start of her career in New York. “I think it was a conscious choice that I wanted to live my life differently … but I still had fun.” Later she will appear in a white blazer dress, ambassador and a woman of now.
“Women today know what they want,” Maria Giulia says. “[They] value concepts such as comfort, durability, sustainability and the concept of investment.” That goes for Korean women, who are looking over the capsule collection created for the occasion – a silk down coat, sweatshirt and belt-bag all printed with sketches by previous Max Mara designers such as Anne-Marie Beretta and Karl Lagerfeld. Maramotti observes them, the way she does all over the world, choosing pieces, how they try them on. “They style them how they want. They pick what they feel is good.”
With 2,600 stores in 100-plus countries, the label will soon shift its focus elsewhere, moving forward always, an ability Maria Giulia says is an essential component of Max Mara’s longevity. But then again, it always has been – passing the baton to whoever understands what is next. “You need to be ready, to understand when you don’t get certain things anymore, you know? That’s part of the reason why [Achille] decided to leave the company to his kids almost 20 years prior to passing away,” she says. “I think that he would be quite pleased to see that we have maintained our DNA.”
What would he think of everything now? “I think quite happy,” she smiles. “I mean he would be very happy.”
“Women today know what they want. They value concepts such as comfort, durability, sustainability and the concept of investment”
“When you are a brand that has a longevity such as ours and such a strong DNA and history, that becomes the message that you want to say – the idea of craftsmanship, the idea of value and quality”
Clockwise from top left: Carolyn Murphy at the opening of the Seoul boutique; a rack with Max Mara Teddy Bear coats; from the capsule collection marking the launch of the store; Ceppo stone lines the interiors; the Korea Furniture Museum; the store’s facade at night; teddy bears point to their famous namesake coats; Jeong-hwa Choi’s Alchemy (2014) at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art.