“Form follows function” may be architecture’s most overused cliché; it also happens to describe Max Mara’s design philosophy. The connection feels especially apt this season, as the house hosted its Atelier presentation during couture week in its Paris flagship, where a spectacular orange helical staircase by Sophie Hicks spirals through the space like a strand of DNA, a reminder that architecture runs through the brand’s genetic code.
If the main line perfects the everyday coat, Max Mara Atelier is where that obsession reaches haut de gamme levels. Or rather, industrial couture: the house’s laboratory where impeccable construction, fabric research, and pattern engineering elevate the most democratic of garments into objects of design.
This season, the team behind the Atelier line looked back to the rationalist architecture of Max Mara’s original Bauhaus-inspired factory in Reggio Emilia. Coatmaking was approached with an architect’s discipline: every line had a purpose, every volume was resolved, every fabric choice was structural rather than merely decorative. Monsieur coats, sculptural capes, redingotes, and kimono wraps balanced generous volumes against lean silhouettes, while cashmere, tweed, radzimir, and faille gave architectural rigor tactile warmth. The palette echoed the built environment: asphalt, cement, and charcoal were punctuated by brick, burgundy, Klein blue, and flashes of gold.
The collection celebrated a lineage of women architects, from Gae Aulenti and Eileen Gray to Cini Boeri, Florence Knoll, and Hicks herself, whose work proved that restraint is anything but austere. Their lesson and work ethic endures here: If a building’s first duty is to shelter, Max Mara would argue the same should be true of a great coat.