Review of Max Mara Spring 2024 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Magnus Berger with Photographer Craig McDean with models Felice Nova Noordhoff, He Cong, and Karolina Spakowski
Max Mara balances work and leisure with its sophisticated new campaign for Spring 2024. The campaign features creative direction from Magnus Berger with photography and film direction by Craig McDean.
In conceiving and designing this collection, creative director Ian Griffiths looked to England’s Women’s Land Army. When the Second World War broke out, necessitating more food production at home but fewer men to produce it, tens of thousands of women – who came to be referred to as “Land Girls” – were called on to work the land and keep the country’s agricultural production thriving. Leaning into this point of inspiration, Griffiths incorporated references to workwear and historical utilitarian English dressing into Max Mara’s distinct brand of sophistication.
The campaign, however, takes a more direct visual approach that, apart from its presence in the styling, doesn’t touch on this narrative backdrop. McDean captures his models at the iconic Breuer building in New York, where the collection’s silhouettes cut a striking character against the interior’s monumental and angular use of concrete.
The imagery particularly comes to life in the accompanying short film, where sensitive cinematography pushes the harmony and tension between refined women in motion and the setting’s atmosphere of artful stillness.
Visually, it’s a strong and striking campaign – but we wonder whether there’s a bit of a missed opportunity here to explore the story of the Women’s Land Army and how it can still serve as a source of inspiration for feminist labor movements today. Max Mara does have a tendency for its campaigns to be simple and elegant portraits that don’t feel a need to do too much conceptually, but in this case, a bigger break from that formula could have been welcome. That being said, we can’t fault consistency and immediacy, and this latest chapter is another strong example of the brand’s consistent vision of alluring sophistication.
Max Mara Creative Director | Ian Griffiths
Creative Director | Magnus Berger
Photographer and Film Director | Craig McDean
Models | Felice Nova Noordhoff, He Cong, and Karolina Spakowski
Stylist | Tonne Goodman
Hair | Orlando Pita
Makeup | Diane Kendal
Manicurist | Megumi Yamamoto
Location | Breuer building