Hemlines may rise and fall, but there’s more changing in fashion than just the garments—and Max Mara is a prime example.
“We are a company that’s not about revolutions but about evolution,” Maria Giulia Maramotti, the company’s U.S. retail director, explains. “Today’s woman is different than when my grandfather started: She wants to be comfortable, beautiful and impeccable.”
And while it’s certainly true that times have changed since Achille Maramotti, Maria Giulia’s grandfather, founded the fashion house, there are some things about the Maramotti family that have always stayed the same. The most prominent example being their unwavering devotion to the arts, something most recently apparent in their sponsorship of April’s opening party for the Renzo Piano–designed Whitney Museum of American Art on the High Line.
That partnership is organic for the family, which owns the Collezione Maramotti, a private contemporary-art collection outside Milan, and has sponsored the Whitney Art Party for the past two years.
Small Whitney Bag, $1,150, MAX MARA, 212-879-6100.
“The Maramotti family has dedicated themselves to making modern and contemporary art available to the public,” says museum director Adam D. Weinberg, “and has demonstrated outstanding support for the arts internationally.”
For Maria Giulia, the Whitney isn’t international; it’s just her neighbor. She’s called Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood home for the past three years, and New York has been a huge influence on the brand. That’s most obvious in its pre-fall collection, which features a leather Whitney Bag, available in three sizes and four colors and the result of a collaboration with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
“What’s happening in the city’s art and music scenes is very contemporary,” Maramotti says. “This lifestyle is really in line with our brand’s DNA.”
