Top Coat

A visit to the birthplace of Max Mara’s legendary 101801 coat. By Windy Aulia

Just a 15-minute drive from the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia lies Manifattura di San Maurizio, the 10,000sqft factory that is the heart of the Max Mara empire. Established in 1988, Manifattura di San Maurizio specialises in manufacturing coats, employing around 240 people to produce over 100,000 Max Mara garments each year, to be sold in stores across 105 countries. The story of Max Mara started in 1951, when Achille Maramotti, a baby boomer, witnessed the rise of working women and conceived Max Mara as a brand dedicated to dressing them. Ever the forward thinker, Maramotti was also an early advocate of the designer collaboration model, long before it became an industry norm. Designers who have been invited to consult—albeit anonymously—on some of Max Mara’s past collections include Karl Lagerfeld, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Anne-Marie Beretta, a French couturier. In 1981, Beretta created the 101801 coat, and the rest as they say, is history.

No changes have been made to the design of the brand’s classic camel coat since its creation, apart from the occasional seasonal tweak.The production process, however, is another matter altogether.At Manifattura di San Maurizio, cutting-edge techniques meet skilled craftsmanship as tradition and technology come together seamlessly. So while paper patterns and scissors have been replaced by laser-cut techniques—which allow for stacks of double-face cashmere to be precisely sliced in seconds—the same floor also sees skilled seamstresses hand-finishing buttons, pockets and linings. The coats are disseminated in parts, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, to various sections in the factory. Each layer of fabric gets a serial number that is used to track it from start to finish. In the event that an item fails the quality check, it gets sent back, via its serial number, to the point of error. The pursuit of the highest quality coat is unparalleled for Max Mara. And nothing embodies the brand’s beliefs, values and design ethos quite like the iconic 101801 coat—a work of art made from one piece of fabric, constructed through a sequence of 73 operations, and built to last a lifetime. ■

Clockwise from top right: Max Mara’s 101801 coats ready to be inspected. An artisan puts a finishing touch on a coat. Workers outside the original Max Mara factory. A factory line inside Manifattura di San Maurizio. Stacks of double-face cashmere. Inside the Max Mara factory in the ’60s. A rack of completed coats