“I was trying to balance between Jane Eyre and her demure self-control and Catherine Earnshaw and her untrammeled wild passion in order to find a woman who’s somewhere in between controlling these two polar emotions.” This was Ian Griffiths’s preshow preface to a Max Mara collection that sought to sublimate the contrasting romantic essences of the Brontë sisters’ famous protagonists: heroine chic.
Walking on the Yorkshire moors inspired the designer’s observation that the English region’s stormy skies and tumbledown dry stone walls share a character trait with cashmere: color. At Max Mara they call the color of processed cashmere casha. It’s a cold, flinty gray. After a burning opening declaration of teddy coats, a field jacket, and an absolute belter of a classic cashmere floor-sweeper coat in madder red, we transitioned casha-wards. There was a fetching interplay between the vertical lines in some hearty corduroy pants and their sister pattern in a formfitting rib-knit full look of split-fronted skirt and guernsey. We hit full Brontë in the following look, a layered, cloaked knit cape in a flecked charcoal cashmere-wool mix over the same ensemble.
Griffiths worked to deliver Georgian swoosh but with modern upgrades. Some of his full skirts in wool or cashmere were hemmed in bomber-jacket ribbing, which fetchingly provided a little cinch and structure. Another great detail was the wide-leg pants in wool or leather that featured the articulated knee seaming more regularly seen on nylon rambler pants. Handsome backpacks in heavy cotton with leather straps and a fantastic poacher jacket in dark flecky tweed (worn over knit bloomers) were further incongruously outdoorsy touches.
The double-wound leather belts created a cinched silhouette that, given the volume of Griffiths’s never-quite-trailing skirts, emphasized their wearers’ narrowness. Casha and madder apart, this was a mostly dark lineup whose detail was frustratingly lost against the black backdrop. However this was a highly cultured collection that the Max Mara faithful will yearn to be swept up in.
