Max Mara’s
Reduction Rococo
Anders Christian Madsen reviews the Max Mara Spring/Summer 2026 collection by Ian Griffiths.
Call it “Reduction Rococo”: in the Max Mara collection he presented on Thursday morning, Ian Griffiths made Madame de Pompadour his muse, but faded the grandeur of her 18th-century silhouette into a faint memory. “I didn’t want a Madame de Pompadour silhouette. I looked at the details of her dresses and the idea of 18th-century Rococo taste in general, which, despite all the courtly affectations and mannerisms, was actually inspired by the idea of asymmetry in nature,” he said after the show.
Remixed chamber music filled the vast white space at Palazzo del Ghiaccio as Griffiths quietly evoked the trappings of the garde-robe d’ancien régime through decidedly contemporary, somewhat sporty garments retained in a muted palette of beige, gray, white, and black. He replaced the corset of the era with elastic bands snapped around the waist. “Fussy clothes don’t give you a sense of power. If you can’t wear something easily, you can’t feel empowered,” he said, reflecting on the thought process behind the collection’s reduction of grandeur to minimalism.
MAX MARA
The 18th-century silhouette has taken the season by storm. Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is turning 20, the V&A is showcasing an exhibition about the queen, and corsets and panniers are everywhere on the runways. In terms of the zeitgeist, the look represents an escapism as well as an ominous pre-revolution energy that’s kind of unnerving to dwell on. Unlike other proposals we’ve seen over the last weeks, Griffiths made light of the look and recontextualized it for the modern-day dresser.
Quite literally, “Everything has to be light, light, light but strong, strong, strong,” he said of the current fashion moment. Rather than escapism, the meeting he staged between sportiness and 18th-century dress codes felt more like a wake-up call from the Rococo la-la land we’ve been frolicking through this season: a light wardrobe for a strong mentality. Max Mara, of course, was always pragmatic at heart.
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