¹ Max Mara Statistical Records, April 1996.Google Scholar

² Called MM. Google Scholar

³ Polan, B., ‘Maximum Effect’, You, 30 October 1994, p.51.Google Scholar

⁴ Apem Spa was established in 1950, in Milan, and belonged to the Rinascente Department Store Group until 1970, but cannot be classified as ‘fashionable’. It was aimed at a much lower market sector and did not offer high standards of fit, finish or style.Google Scholar

⁵ Achille Maramotti was interviewed by the author at the Max Mara headquarters in Reggio Emilia, on 21 July 1995. I am grateful to Professor Ian Griffiths of Kingston University for his help in arranging this interview.Google Scholar

⁶ E.g. Giacomoni, S., The Italian Look Reflected, Mazzotta, Milan, 1984.Google Scholar

⁷ Per Una Storia della Moda Pronta, CISST, Milan, 1990/ Edifir, Florence, 1991.Google Scholar

⁸ US dress historians Joan Severa and Merrill Horswill have established a viable method for the analysis of costume as material culture. They suggest, (i) determination of the modal type of sample; (ii) analysis of artefacts for material, design construction and workmanship; (iii) examination of these in terms of identification, evaluation, cultural analysis, interpretation and intuitive analysis. Images may be analysed in terms of intentions of the maker, participation of subject and the response of the viewer.Google Scholar

⁹ These can be seen advertised in the pages of Italian high fashion magazine Bellezza from the mid-1940s.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The Pitti Palace collection is the most important and most extensive holding of historical garments in Italy. The permanent display is changed bi-annually, and correspondingly a new catalogue is published by Centro Di, Florence.Google Scholar

¹¹ A model is the word used to describe the garment or outfit in this period, whilst a toile is a cotton reproduction of the original model, bearing the crucial details of cut and finish, but sold at a substantially lower price.Google Scholar

¹² Maria Pezzi, who began work for an agency in 1936, has a unique private archive of her illustrations, and has described her role in detail in interview with the author, at her home in Milan, on 13 October 1995. The Italian couturiers bought in the form of toiles and patterns. ‘Exclusivity’, together with the right to use the Paris name, could be bought, but at ‘a very high price’. The ‘Villa’ agency, for example, negotiated a contract with Chanel, to reproduce the French fabric used in the original model, with an Italian fabric house; the exclusive trimmings and fastenings were provided directly by the Couture house.Google Scholar

¹³ Achille Maramotti in interview with the author.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Ibid.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Maramotti's comment is substantiated by surviving garments; although there are no examples of early Italian ready-to-wear held in any museum collections in Italy, corresponding examples in British museum collections, such as Brighton Municipal and the Locke Museum at Willenhall testify to a generally poor standard of fit and finish in comparison to made-to-measure.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The German ready-to-wear industry was expanding rapidly by the early 1950s; there were few Jewish tailors left, so there was little alternative, and progress in the field was swift. Nonetheless, Maramotti is certain that there was still little contact with other European ready-to-wear industries, including Germany.Google Scholar

¹⁸ This is described in a number of Italian Fashion Histories, such as Moda Italia, vol. 1, Electa, Milan, 1987, and is substantiated by the press coverage in the private archival records of journalist and economist Elisa Massai, who was Italian correspondent for the US fashion trade journal Women's Wear Daily, 1949–83.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The company is still trading successfully under this name, but is under new management, and has no records from this period.Google Scholar

²⁰ Maramotti dates his ‘special understanding’ with Italian textiles from 1952–3.Google Scholar

²¹ Elisa Massai in interview with the author at her home in Milan on 19 July 1995.Google Scholar

²² Ibid.Google Scholar

²³ Ginsborg, P., A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–88, Penguin, London, 1990, p.159: ‘At the height of the ERP programme, Paul Hoffman, head of the ECA wrote a “country study” of Italy, criticising use of ERP funds. No overall plan had been evolved, certain areas like steel and textiles were being indiscriminately favoured.’ Although no complete study of Marshall Aid in Italy has yet been undertaken, it would appear that the funds went in a number of different directions but especially grain and coal imports and textiles. See Ellwood, D.W., L'Europa ricostruita: politica ed economia tra Stati Uniti ed Europa occidentale, 1945–1955, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994. Elisa Massai in interview cited particular large Italian textile groups.Google Scholar

²⁴ As an import incentive.Google Scholar

²⁵ This is confirmed in a variety of contemporary reports in Women's Wear Daily held in the archival records of Elisa Massai.Google Scholar

²⁶ Maramotti used woollen textiles from Loro Piana, Rivetti, Faudella, Trabaldo, Marzotto and Ferrarin, silk from Camisci, Terragni, Ones and Mantero of Como, cotton from Solbiati, and linen from French manufacturers Agache. Solbiati, today's biggest supplier, had not yet moved into production.Google Scholar

²⁷ According to Max Mara's Director of Public Relations Giorgio Guidotti, many of the original workers are still with the company, including the fashion co-ordinator. Professor Ian Griffiths (who is also a design consultant at Max Mara), suggests that as many as 20 per cent of those employed at the Max Mara factory and the sample workrooms have been with Max Mara over 30 years, and most of these were trained at the Maramotti pattern-cutting school, which is now closed.Google Scholar

²⁸ Pezzi, Maria interview.Google Scholar

²⁹ Explored by the author, in relation to the British ready-to-wear industry in an undergraduate thesis entitled ‘The Commercialisation of the Paris Haute Couture Industry 1947–1965’, University of Brighton, 1986, now held by the University, and at the Musée des Beaux Arts, Paris.Google Scholar

³⁰ Maramotti insists that he was the only Italian ready-to-wear representative who attended the Paris shows. Laura Lusuardi, (Fashion Co-ordinator and employee of Max Mara since the early 1950s) in an interview at the Max Mara factory in Reggio Emilia on 19 July 1995, recalled that they were ‘always acutely aware of stylistic developments’.Google Scholar

³¹ High fashion magazines, both domestic and international continued to demonstrate a strong allegiance to Paris fashion.Google Scholar

³² Maramotti interview.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid.Google Scholar

³⁶ Arianna, October 1961, pp.86–7, lists 23 retailers of Max Mara in Lombardy alone, with one in each provincial town, but four in Milan.Google Scholar

³⁷ Laura Lusuardi interview.Google Scholar

³⁸ Maramotti interview.Google Scholar

³⁹ In production 1953–77, Milan.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Maramotti interview.Google Scholar

⁴¹ No exact dates have yet been established. Google Scholar

⁴² 1959–77, Bari. Controlled by the Swedish Hettemarks family.Google Scholar

⁴³ According to contemporary press reports in the archive of Elisa Massai.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ This kind of customer orientation took a back-row seat in the fashion industry of the 1980s, as the icon-designer gained dictatorial status, and the clients' requirements became almost incidental. Yet in the economic turmoil of the 1990s, the Max Mara ‘wearability’ signature is highly fashionable. Maxima remains the business company within the group, managing over 80 direct retail outlets. There are, however, almost 200 franchised outlets, linked by computer to the head office, supplying fast market information about which designs are working and which are not. This information goes straight to the design team.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ With the Italian market more or less sewn up, the target franchising markets are now overseas and the new flagship store on New York's Madison Avenue is now open. Export development is now seen as vital, however, and although 12 years ago only 18 per cent of Max Mara business was export, today the figure is nearer 35 per cent. Simultaneously, Italian clients have become very important to the US fashion press.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ This is substantiated by analysis of contemporary Italian fashion magazines in the Tremelloni Library, Milan, and Maramotti confirms the interest in the case of Max Mara.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ An exact foundation date has yet to be established.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The Max Mara archive reveals that in 1965 there was also a big editorial feature in Arnica, a weekly magazine published in association with the Milan newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, with a similar market to Arianna. Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Giorgio Guidotti, Director of Public Relations, Max Mara, in interview with the author at Max Mara in Reggio Emilia, on 19 July 1995.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ For example, Arianna, April 1963, p.46: ‘Arianna presenta in exclusiva per l'Italia la collezione Primavera-Estate 1963 della casa di confezioni Max-Mara: votando per il Referendum del colore, potrete vincere 100 abiti pronti da indossare nella taglia da voi indicata.’ Google Scholar

⁵¹ Explored in White, , ‘The Commercialisation of the Paris Haute Couture’.Google Scholar

⁵² Ibid.Google Scholar

⁵³ This was just at the moment when Yves St Laurent emerged.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Max Mara has maintained this approach, and still uses consultants, alongside their full-time designers. There are a number of British faces, selected from regular talent-hunting trips to British graduation shows, and from close collaboration and sponsorship of projects at the fashion schools of Kingston University and the Royal College of Art.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ In the 1966–7 period, Khan was a pioneer of the left-bank avant garde style.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Maramotti says that he is the only one who produces only his own lines. Max Mara has never made any products for a ‘designer’.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Maramotti interview.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ This was the point at which Max Mara started working with ‘young’ and ‘distinctive’ Sarah Moon and other famous photographers, such as Paolo Roversi, Fabrizio Ferri, and Peter Lindbergh to create the image-making publicity campaigns which still adorn walls at the Max Mara HQ, and which established the internationally-known Max Mara style. Photographers like Moon were normally found shooting spreads for glossy fashion magazines. The notion that promotion should be of, and associated with, the highest possible creative standard became important for Max Mara from the late 1960s onwards. Nancy, Hall-Duncan in The History of Fashion Photography, Alpine, New York, 1979, pp.214–15 states that Moon ‘uses photography to portray fantasy, with a strikingly different outlook’. From the early 1970s, Moon took photographs ‘for Nova, Vogue, Marie-Claire, Harper's Bazaar and Elle’ and was the ‘prime exponent of the “impressionistic” fashion approach’, p.228. The 1995 advertising campaign was shot by Max Vadukul with the top model Christy Turlington.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Outside Italy, the UK is Max Mara's second largest market, after France. British women now spend more on Max Mara group clothes, than on any other Italian manufacturer, apart from Benetton, according to Max Mara PR Director Giorgio Guidotti. Although the Max Mara line is now the ‘deluxe’ headliner, the Marella, Marina Rinaldi, I-Blues, Sportmax, Penny Black and Weekend labels are all part of the Max Mara empire. There are 16 lines, six manufacturing companies and a distribution company, covering the womenswear market from ‘designer’ to inexpensive styling, casual, smart and outsize. There are over 260 boutiques in over 37 countries, that are either company-owned or franchised.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Maramotti's son, Luigi, 37, is a managing director and vice-president of the Max Mara group; his brother Ignazio, 33, is a managing director, and their sister Ludovica, 39, is managing director and president of Manifattura del Nord (one of the Max Mara companies).Google Scholar