Max Mara Recalls its Heyday

MILAN, Italy — Female empowerment is a recurring topic right now. A resurgence of power dressing — with all its big-shouldered, unabashedly bossy implications — is almost a logical consequence, fashion-wise. It certainly is for Max Mara, which for decades has been providing powerful and aspiringly powerful women with the perfect wardrobe to confront the world dressed in the best way possible. Plus, the heyday of the historic label can be traced to the end of the '80s and throughout the '90s, when Max Mara brought power dressing to a global audience.

Images of those seminal shows, together with the campaigns often featuring Linda Evangelista, were pinned on the board backstage on Thursday. The show moved to a new location, to further underscore the message — the brutalist premises of the Università Bocconi, the world-renown economic school where more than 50 percent of students are women and where big bosses of the future are molded.

However, for creative director Ian Griffiths, the byword of the collection was glamour: something, as Linda Evangelista famously said, one should not be afraid of. It translated into a very long, very product focused, outstanding collection of broad-shouldered coats, capes and tailoring done up in neutral hues or bright brights and worn with glamorous, tight, high boots. The iconic teddy bear coat in tourquiose perfectly captured the spirit of the whole endeavor. The pomp of the Eighties might be unrepeatable, but this collection hit a good point.