Advertisement

Max Mara shows clothes inspired by Phoebe Waller-Bridge at Milan Fashion Week

Max Mara Spring/Summer 2020  - REX
Max Mara Spring/Summer 2020 - REX

Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths used Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge as the starting point of his catwalk show this season. It wasn't the Killing Eve writer’s slick bob, scarlet lipstick or dashing green velvet suit that caught his attention, but her impeccable feminist credentials. She’s currently knee-deep in a script for the next Bond film, saying she’ll make sure it will ‘treat women properly’. Griffiths has helpfully supplied a wardrobe for a Bond Grrrl.

An anti-fur protest outside the Milanese show venue saw scantily clad women lying on the ground partially covered by mink coats and spattered with fake blood. This provided some useful 007-style colour and a high body count. Indeed, it looked as if Killing Eve’s stylish psychopath Villanelle had just passed by. Though there was in fact no fur on the catwalk.

max mara - Credit: Daniel Dal Zennaro/EPA-EFE/REX 
Model Ugbad Abdi walks the Max Mara Spring/Summer 2020 catwalk Credit: Daniel Dal Zennaro/EPA-EFE/REX

Max Mara’s mission is to provide a working woman with the sleekest of wardrobes. It does so season after season. And that means career women of every nation, profession and religion. This was among the first labels to make a point of using hijab-clad Somali model Halima Aden in its show a few seasons ago. This time, it was Somali-American model Ugbad walking down the runway in a black polka-dot dress and matching hijab.

But Griffiths was a passionate Manchester club kid in the 1980s. However dapper and inclusive he and the brand are these days, he can’t resist a touch of anarchy in the styling of his shows. So impeccable Prince of Wales-check box-pleated skirts and safari jackets were paired with black lips.

kaia Gerber  - Credit: Daniele Ventirelli/WireImage
Kaia Gerber at Max Mara Spring/Summer 2020 Credit: Daniele Ventirelli/WireImage

The brand is also famous for its camel-hair coats and for using every variation of brown, from toffee to cream, practically everywhere, often head to toe. Griffiths confesses that ‘I dream in camel’. But this season there was only a touch of tawny. Black, not a colour the house is particularly known for, was used to good effect in well-cut day dresses. On her Majesty’s secret service this spy is clad in khaki bush jackets with military knee-length shorts and long socks.

As for evenings gambling at the casino with a super villain, both Gigi and Bella Hadid, as well as Cindy Crawford’s daughter Kaia Gerber, Joan Smalls and the rest of a very starry cast of models, were clad in floor-length bias-cut gowns in shades of sherbet lemon, bubblegum pink and pistachio ice cream, albeit accessorised with a matching military cap and some solid-looking parachute-style straps. Perfect for jumping out of a helicopter to save the world in style.