High up on a hill, in a land far, far away, there lives a brilliant fashion mogul and his brood. Tucked into the Italian countryside, the retail emperor dwells in a 13th-century castle replete with a working drawbridge, a turreted brick tower and its very own enchanted forest. On Sundays, Achille Maramotti, as he is known, and his wife Ida gather their three children, Luigi, Ignazio and Maria Ludovica, and nine grandchildren, to sup in their verdant gardens and discuss the family business. But theirs is no ordinary venture. And while "family business" might sound modest, theirs is hardly that. Theirs is what some like to call: the largest high-end retailer for women in the world. With 1,790 boutiques and counting, and staggering sales of over $1 billion, it is a global giant named simply: MaxMara.
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BUT LET'S REWIND.
ONCE UPON A TIME, a long, long time ago (the late 19th century), there was a spitfire named Marina Rinaldi, who lived in the rustic hamlet Reggio Emilia. (To tell the story properly, the "R" in Reggio must roll off your tongue like fine wine.) Signora Rinaldi was a tailor, managing an elegant atelier in the heart of what would become one of the most prosperous cities in Italia and instilling in her equally fashion-forward daughter Giulia the vast importance of being an independent woman. "Don't be kept by a man," she would say. "Have a job."
Taking her mother's pearls of wisdom and stringing them into fortune's necklace, Giulia started the Scuola De Taglio e Cucito, a couture school for young girls. The year was 1923. A visionary with a flair for fashion, Giulia taught her pupils the timeless skills of sewing, amassing so much success that she opened two more branches--one in Switzerland and one in Rome. Reggio Emilia may have been provincial. Marina and Giulia's foresight was not.
Allora (as they purr in Italy), this is where the tale takes flight. Giulia married and had a son Achille, who trained to be a lawyer but found himself curiously inspired by a Swiss raincoat factory near his mother's school. There was something about those cloaks that seemed to set off sparks. He knew his talented madre and her legion of students were treasures, and thus, before pursuing law, he decided to spin the retail wheel.
Achille envisioned prêt-à-porter: ready-to-wear clothes in a period when Italian fashion still meant exclusive, hand-made threads. People were buying raincoats, wearing the jackets tirelessly and seeking tailors for reinvention only when their boredom became unbearable. "Why not mass-produce a fashion collection that would change each season?" Achille mused. Why not, indeed. He hired a couple of his mother's apprentices to make patterns, lured designers from Paris and London, and the business was off.
His first collection was Fall/Winter 1951. Achille charmed several Italian fabric stores into clearing space for his off-the-rack accoutrements, and MaxMara was born. In the annals of fashion history, it's been said that Madeleine Vionnet was the first to cut cloth on a bias. Coco Chanel invented the lovely ladylike suit. Her rival, Christian Dior, rocked the fashion world by accentuating a woman's curves. And in Italy, Achille Maramotti started prêt-à-porter.
SO, WHO IS MAX MARA? And when does he arrive on the scene? Truth be told, there is no such gent. MaxMara is a "fantasy name"--an alias with international appeal that's easy to pronounce from Japan to the U.S. Quite a pioneering concept for a '50s entrepreneur. "Mara," of course, is short for Maramotti; "Max" was Achille's answer to global diction. When combined with his passion for tailoring and affordable attire (as compared to Parisian haute couture, yet infused with the same craftsmanship), MaxMara was his ticket to universal devotees.
The first collection, with its essential and exacting style, already embodied the features of subsequent MaxMara apparel: clean cuts and precise lines inspired by the dazzling French style in vogue at the time but reinvented and redesigned for Italian tastes. Like a full moon prompts amore, fortune soon followed.
Fast forward to today. MaxMara headquarters are still tucked in Reggio Emilia (now the illustrious home to Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese), and Achille, one of the wealthiest men in Italy, dwells in that hilltop castle. He's retired from the fashion world, and his children, Luigi, Ignazio and Maria Ludovica, run the family business. It's a retail empire that Achille grew stitch by stitch, button by hem, first expanding in Italy, then on to France, throughout Europe and, in the '80s and '90s, around the globe.
Luigi is now president of MaxMara s.r.l., encompassing a multitude of brands (MaxMara, Marina Rinaldi, Sportmax and Max & Co. are sold stateside), Ignazio is MaxMara's managing director and Maria Ludovica is the president of Manifatture de Nord s.r.l., overseeing strategic product development. Keeping it in la famiglia, Ignazio's wife and Maria's husband are also involved. And the nine grandchildren? Chances are, their day will come.
"If you ask them if they were forced or if they chose the family business, they would all say they chose it," says Giorgio Guidotti, president of worldwide communications for the MaxMara Fashion Group. "Because, of course, they say it's part of their DNA."
SO WHO IS THE MAXMARA MUSE? A woman of sophisticated style, cultured and well-traveled. Take C.Z. Guest, a Boston debutante and MaxMara admirer honored by the Council of Fashion Designers of America as a Fashion Icon. Or Cate Blanchett, an actress of stunning taste and elegance, who got married in a white cashmere MaxMara coat.
The house might be known more for daywear than red carpet, Sex and the City-esque "zsa-zsa-zsu," but MaxMara still adorns its share of celebrities, from Isabella Rossellini to cover girl Liv Tyler, from Susan Sarandon to Catherine Zeta-Jones. This kiss-kiss rapport with Hollywood also extends into costume design, most recently swathing Angela Bassett in the upcoming The Lazarus Child.
While the fashionably fabulous often get caught up in egregiously expensive wisps and impractical design, MaxMara creates with sensibility in mind. "Malcolm McLaren, who with fashion designer Vivienne Westwood were the stars of the punk movement in the '70s, once said to me, 'We see so many shows that are made to sell lipstick. MaxMara is really made to show women what they can buy,'" says Guidotti. "We were having dinner in Paris during Fashion Week, and it was true. You see some incredible shows, but in the end, nobody can buy those clothes, and they are made to sell lipstick and perfume. Editors expect beautiful, modern and wearable [clothes from us]."
The MaxMara woman doesn't yank all her frocks from her closet, throwing fits that there's nothing to wear, because a MaxMara wardrobe is based in reality, with confections of timeless chic. And design director Laura Lusuardi, for whom a vacation means traveling to India to see how people make beads, weaves her love of fabrics and commitment to fine tailoring into authentic runway dreams.
Lusuardi, a diamond in the MaxMara vault, has been working with the Maramottis for over 35 years. "When I was in school in 1964, I was 18 and helped my father in his prêt-à-porter boutique," she says. "My father taught me to love fabrics-- and to introduce myself to Mr. Achille Maramotti, in order to intern at the company. In 1969, my first brand project [turned into] a new collection."
That her first stab spiraled into an entire line is a testament to her talent. But true to the Maramotti retail religion, Lusuardi deflects attention and praises her team. For MaxMara is a silent giant. A company more adamant about behind-the-seams anonymity than a supermodel who refuses to eat. (Admit it, you were wondering about a man called Max until enlightenment in paragraph eight.)
Conjuring up a delicious lost world where quality comes before fame and fit takes precedence over frills, Lusardi isn't hip to the society orbit. She doesn't fling bon mots at the press. And although she's been their creative force for nearly four decades, you won't see her gallivanting with luminaries, her name peppering Page Six. This same philosophy is to bless or blame for embroidering the careers of the flat-out-famous like Karl Lagerfeld, Domenico Dolce, Stefano Gabbana and Narciso Rodriguez, whose identities were shrouded in fabric at MaxMara until they moved on to the Next Big Thing (namely, Chanel and eponymous fashion powerhouses). But MaxMara is more than just a hot season or two. It's an all-the-time, 53-year-old and counting, perpetual Big Thing.
"We worked with famous designers, but we didn't need their names," Luigi Maramotti once said. MaxMara fancies teamwork--a motto an elementary school teacher would relish--with Lusuardi as the "orchestra director of creative minds."
"Creativity doesn't last forever. We've seen great designers having a couple of great years, and then all of a sudden, it can get repetitive or they can get down in the favor of the press," says Lusuardi. "We don't want to be prisoners of this machine. MaxMara's philosophy is that creativity goes into every level of the process, from the person who chooses the fabrics to the person who eventually does the merchandising in the store. It's not just about the sketch."
So it seems the last chapter of this story is merely mid-novel for MaxMara. At corporate headquarters in the countryside, partway between Milano and Bologna, half-way between fairytale and modern mega-success, the style magnates are hard at work designing the Fall/Winter collection (cutting-edge meets classic, of course), and rolling out Max & Co. (a younger, trendier line). Four stores are now open in the U.S.: SouthCoast Plaza, Stanford Shopping Center, the Beverly Center and Mandalay Place. There are 40 to 50 more on their way.
There's also a perfume in the making, MaxMara's first fragrance in over 50 years, and a very big deal come September. "We hope it's going to become one of those classic fragrances," Guidotti confides. "We really want to make a major success of it. A classic fragrance called 'MaxMara.' Something to last." For the master of lasting impressions, it should be an easy feat.
The end.
Or rather, a new beginning, once upon another time.
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