MAXMARA RESORT COLLECTION IN VENICE
A settlement built on a lagoon in northern Italy in Roman times became one of the world’s most magical cities also thanks to astute and enterprising medieval merchants. And it seems that every writer who ever was has attempted to describe its grace and magic. “There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.” wrote Mary Shelley. The most illustrious of those merchants was Marco Polo. On the 700th anniversary of his death, the world will witness a series of important exhibitions and events. Marco Polo was open-minded, inquisitive and tolerant; it has even been suggested that he was an early feminist. His thirteenth century travelogue ‘Il Milione’ describes without judgement how Tartar women and girls rode horses just like men did and marvels at an Island of Women in India where men might only visit for three months of the year.
Max Mara follows in Polo’s footsteps with an opulent and multi-cultural collection that aims for a little magic. Polo spent twenty years at the court of Kublai Khan in Mongolia, where, even today, camel and cashmere wools are produced and which were also traded on the so-called Silk Road, a conduit for all manners of luxurious commodities. Naturally the Max Mara Resort 2025 / Pre-Spring 2025 collection kicks off with camel, black, white and tan and introduces silks in nuanced shades like those Polo might have brought back from Cathay or Constantinople. From ‘robes de chambre’ to parkas via trenches and tabarri, Max Mara serves up the stateliest coats. There are gowns for special occasions but there are also sweeping spolverini, snappy tunics, sharply cut tailleurs and neat all-in-ones with everyday elegance ready for travel and adventure. Outsize tassels, chunky drawstrings, extravagant handkerchief cuffs and velvet pannier skirts are key features. The crowning glory will be series of turban inspired headpieces, realized in collaboration with legendary milliner Stephen Jones.
La Serenissima’s position as a trading post between east and west enabled the art and architecture of each to be mixed. Pointed arches, elegant ogees and lyrical fretwork produced a unique style that has a magical quality. John Ruskin declared the Palazzo Ducale and the fine tracery of its loggias “the central building of the world.” The extravagant, writhing foliations of Venetian Gothic are to be found in textiles too. Max Mara presents richly woven patterns featuring stylised floral sprays and motifs associated with Zoroastrian, Hinduism and the Chinese philosophical concept of Yin and Yang.
The likes of Marco Polo would leave women in charge while they went on trade missions lasting for years; one reason why women in Venice were more privileged and powerful than anywhere else. La Serenissima is frequently represented as a woman, embodying justice, harmony, power, progress, loyalty and grace. What better place to show the Max Mara Resort 2025 collection than the city where the luxury business started; Venetia. A masterpiece of Gothic art, the Palazzo Ducale in Venice is designed as a grandiose layering of building fabric and ornamental elements, from the ancient foundations to the 14th-15th century layout of the entire edifice, including its noteworthy Renaissance inserts and sumptuous Mannerist features.
The interiors, superbly decorated by legions of artists, including Titian, Veronese, Tiepolo, Tintoretto and Vittoria, offer exceptional, extensive tours, from the huge chambers of political life to the exquisite rooms of the Doge’s Apartment, and from the prisons to the luminous loggias overlooking the Piazza and the lagoon. There are also the so-called “secret tours”, which allow access to some of the most gruesome locations in the palace’s history, among them the Torture Chamber and the cells of the Piombi.
All images courtsey of Max Mara