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Max Mara Fall-Winter 2020/21 collection

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Painters, poets and philosophers, composers, cartoonists and crooners from Shakespeare to Stevie Nicks, TS Eliot to Tracy Emin, Jeanette Winterson to Jean Genet; they have all felt the lure of the sea. Max Mara shares their fascination.

The ocean is apotent metaphor for the human condition; hazard and hope, love and longing, valour and vaingloriousness. Tales of ships and sailors are universal. “In civilisations without boats,” Michel Foucault observed, “dreams dry up.”

Ms Max Mara has been dreaming a lot of late. Daydreaming. A little tired of the hidebound conventions of corporate life, she sits at her desk and entertains fantasies of running away to sea. Her dreams cast her as the captain of her own ship, out to rule the waves and make her fortune. Northward bound, from Morocco to Murmansk, she imagines majestic wintry seascapes. And whilst she’s charting her course with characteristic Max Mara levelheadedness, she detects a surprisingly romantic impulse stirring within her.

And what’s in this latter-day adventurer’s wardrobe? Well, the maritime theme yields a variety of silhouettes and a newer way to mix Max Mara’s signature camel, grey, white and, naturally, navy. There are coats of all kinds; officer class greatcoats, capes, cabans, and duffels with toggles and tassels. Luxuriant robe-de-chambres are tied at the waist with an elegant rope. Ruffles and gathers lend debonair swagger to the shoulders and sleeves of camel hair classics, pinstripe jackets and a skirts with hemlines that dip dramatically on one side. A capacious Max Mara doudoune is perfect for the harshest inclemencies - its outer shell is resilient nylon, but its wadding is a cashmere fleece. Of course, an epic sea adventure requires a fair amount of stowage. Hence Max Mara’s Marine bag capacious and soft but with structure like a ship’s keel.