Volcanic Elegance: Max Mara’s ‘Vesuvian Venus’ Ignites Caserta
Max Mara‘s Resort 2026 fashion show from Reggia di Caserta, Naples June 2026.
By Mackenzie Richard
For the opening chapter of Max Mara’s 75-year anniversary, creative director Ian Griffiths staged his runway in the echoing Baroque halls of the Royal Palace of Caserta, a mise-en-scène so cinematic that Mount Vesuvius brooded obligingly on the horizon.
Sophia Loren, Silvana Mangano, and a touch of Bella Figura made his mood board which was an ode to Italian style. Still, the romance came with a wink—and just enough smolder to register on modern sensors. Griffiths’ proposition was a “fantasy of Naples” in which post-war Italian glamour collides with the restless pragmatism of today’s global woman. Precision tailoring anchors the volcanic sensuality, nostalgia is cross-stitched with utility, and the collection’s true alchemy lies in that equilibrium.
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Pragmatic Fantasy, Tailored Temptation, & Vesuvian Glamour
Griffiths cast this resort outing as an imaginative dialogue between Italy’s storied past and the present-tense assurance of the Max Mara woman. He began with Ruth Orkin’s iconic 1951 photograph An American Girl in Italy, reinterpreting its stride through male scrutiny as proof of how far self-possessed femininity has come in three-quarters of a century. Around that axis he layered a constellation of references—Sophia Loren’s untamed allure, Silvana Mangano’s grounded glamour, the chaotic poetry of Naples as chronicled in Naples ’44, and even a flash of Malcolm McLaren’s puckish rebellion—conjuring a vision of Italian style co-written by its women, where cinema, street life, and handcraft intersect.
The clothes translate this vision through a calibrated duality: sensuality anchored by pragmatism, nostalgia refreshed with novelty. Feather-light Neapolitan tailoring—pared back in true southern tradition—supports rolled-hem shorts and palace-ready pant-dresses, ensuring ease without tourist pastiche. Oversized sequin prints sourced from E. Marinella’s 1951 tie archive salute the anniversary while illustrating how menswear codes can steady voluptuous silhouettes. Sparkle-flecked knits for grey-sky days, bias-cut satin slips, and jaunty fedoras expand what Griffiths describes as a fashion buffet—coats for one traveller, bikinis for another.
Threaded through every look is a quiet insistence on confidence. Construction and fit remain meticulous, so a bodysuit shimmering like volcanic glass or a crystal-dipped gown echoing palace fountains never feels like costume, only an elevated extension of reality. The result is a smarter, sexier fantasy—one that invites women to stride through history’s grandest rooms with their dignity intact and their imaginations alight.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
The fantasy for the customer today is to be able to dress with complete confidence… something with a strong element of newness, even sexier than she would normally wear, but thought through in a way that makes her feel totally herself. That’s what Max Mara delivers—a bond of trust, never costume, always character.
– Ian Griffiths
THE WRAP UP
In the vaulted corridors of Caserta, Griffiths’s thesis of confident fantasy translated from talking point to tangible wardrobe with remarkable fidelity: feather-weight tailoring gave real-world ballast to sequinned Marinella slip suits, while lava-sheer bodysuits found equilibrium in pragmatic coats cut to travel as well as they photograph. If his aim was to let the Max Mara woman stride through history’s grandest rooms unfettered by the male gaze—or by impractical design—then the mission largely landed. The clothes whispered nostalgia without lapsing into costume, dialed up sex appeal without sacrificing discretion, and, crucially, made confidence feel like a birthright rather than a performance. One could quibble that the sparkle-flecked knits and teddy-coat reprises tread familiar ground, but even these comfort notes reinforced the brand’s promise of trust. Taken as chapter one of a jubilee year, the collection proves Griffiths can honor seventy-five years of heritage while keeping both feet—rolled-hem shorts and all—firmly in the now.
