Women Wear 06 · The Wear

Max Mara, and the three hard things that save it.

She wore this last winter.

She will wear it next winter. Her sister has pointed this out more than once, and she has never taken it as criticism, because it is not.

Max Mara was founded in Reggio Emilia in 1951 by Achille Maramotti, and it was built on an idea most Italian houses of the period had no interest in: that a coat is not an occasion. It is what a woman puts on to go to work, and it should still be correct in ten years.

The house has been making camel coats ever since. Not a camel coat for a season — the camel coat, revisited, re-cut, never abandoned.

A wardrobe built that way has one real danger. It becomes a uniform.

Three objects here stop that happening, and all three are hard.

The Woman

She can tell you where every piece came from and roughly what year.

She does not shop often. When she does she buys the better version of something she already owns, and gives the old one away properly rather than letting it die at the back of a cupboard.

People describe her as understated, which irritates her slightly. She is not understated. She is finished deciding.

There is a difference, and it shows in the three things she chose that are not soft, not pale, and not Max Mara.

Camel hair, brushed until the surface has a visible nap, cut short and closed with nothing but a self-tie belt.

The hood is the decision. A shawl collar would have made this a classic coat and nobody would have looked twice. Instead the collar keeps going, over the back of the head, and the whole garment turns into something closer to a robe than a coat.

There are no buttons. There is no hook. If she does not tie it, it hangs open, and she mostly does not tie it.

The inside label reads cucito a mano — hand-sewn. That is not a slogan printed on a hang tag. It is stitched into the lining where only she will see it.

Explore the Max Mara Camel Hair Coat →

Silk in a flat beige, with a long scarf collar knotted at the throat and held by one small gold ring.

The ring is the detail that keeps this out of the 1970s. Without it the tie would drift and need adjusting all day. With it, the knot stays exactly where she put it in the morning.

Beige silk against camel hair is a risk. Two neighbouring colours in two completely different surfaces either read as considered or as laundry.

It reads as considered because the textures are so far apart. The coat has a nap you can see from across a street. The blouse has none at all.

Explore the Max Mara Silk Blouse →

Cream cotton, high waisted, wide and flared from the hip, with a sailor front — a drop panel fastened by two columns of antiqued brass buttons.

This is the only piece in the look with any ornament on it, and it is ornament that does a job. The buttons are the fastening. They are not there to be admired.

Cream trousers in winter are a deliberate provocation and she knows it. Everyone else is in black from October.

The flare matters more than the colour. A short coat over a narrow trouser cuts a woman in half at the thigh. A short coat over a wide one lets the leg keep going.

Explore the Max Mara Flared Trousers →

The first hard thing.

A black ankle boot in high-shine leather, slipped on over elastic side gussets, with an apron seam running across the toe like a loafer. And then, under the heel, a block of polished silver metal.

Jil Sander spent a career proving that minimalism is not the absence of ideas. This boot is the argument in one object: nothing added anywhere, except a heel that stops you dead.

Under cream trousers it is the only true black in the look, and the silver answers the brass on the waistband from four feet away.

Explore the Jil Sander Leather Ankle Boots →

The second hard thing.

An ivory leather frame bag, trapezoid, closing on a small gold ball clasp. The body is as plain as leather gets. The handle is bamboo — knotted, uneven, visibly grown rather than made.

That contrast is the entire bag. A perfectly resolved leather shape, and then one component the factory had no control over, because no two lengths of bamboo have the same nodes in the same places.

It is small. She carries very little, and the clasp makes a sound when it shuts.

Explore the Jil Sander Leather Handbag →

A fine open-weave wool scarf in light camel, finished with a short raw fringe.

It is nearly the colour of the coat and not quite — a shade lighter, a shade yellower. Matched exactly it would have looked like a set. Half a step off, it looks like two things she owns.

The weave is loose enough to read as light rather than bulk, which is what a short coat needs at the neck. A heavy scarf under a cropped coat makes the upper body square.

She wraps it twice and leaves the ends uneven.

Explore the Max Mara Wool Scarf →

The third hard thing, and the only colour in the look with any heat in it.

A squared acetate frame in marbled red-amber tortoiseshell, with rose-tinted lenses and the house name in gold on the temple.

Everything else she is wearing is camel, cream, beige or black. This is burnt orange shot through with dark red, and it sits directly on her face.

She would say she bought them because they were there. In a wardrobe this disciplined, the one unjustifiable object is never an accident.

It is the piece that proves the rest was chosen.

Explore the Max Mara Acetate Sunglasses →

In Closing

Five pieces in four shades of the same colour, and three objects with edges — metal, bamboo, burnt red.

Take the three away and this is a very good uniform. Leave them in and it is a woman.

She is not dressing for this winter. She is dressing the way she dresses, and this winter happens to be the one taking place.

Next year the coat comes out again.