Everyone chooses their own look. Fashion doesn't dictate anymore.
In a city that never sits down, a 75-year-old Italian fashion house chose Shanghai over Milan to mark its anniversary — a gesture that speaks to a quiet but profound reordering of where cultural authority in luxury now resides. Max Mara's collection wove cheongsam silhouettes and silk pankou buttons into its signature tailoring, not as decoration but as dialogue, acknowledging that Chinese consumers — who now shape a quarter of global luxury spending — are no longer looking to the West to define what elegance means. The show was a reckoning dressed in camel and red: that prestige, in our time, must be earned through listening rather than bestowed through heritage.
- Chinese luxury consumers, once eager adopters of Western prestige, are turning inward — the 'guochao' movement signals a generation that wants fashion to reflect who they are, not who Europe imagined them to be.
- European brands that treated China as a reliable revenue stream are now facing a more demanding audience, one that can distinguish authentic cultural engagement from decorative borrowing.
- Max Mara walked a razor's edge — incorporating cheongsam silhouettes and knotted silk buttons risks cliché or worse, and the brand held extensive consultations precisely to avoid the hollow gesture of a post-show apology.
- The decision to show in Shanghai's Long Museum, cast almost entirely local models, and seat Eileen Gu front row was not incidental — every choice was a signal that the brand's center of gravity had shifted.
- The collection landed as something rare in luxury fashion: a conversation between two design languages that felt earned, backed by 33 years of presence and 27 boutiques in Shanghai alone.
Ian Griffiths, the British designer at Max Mara's helm, chose Shanghai for the brand's 75th anniversary show after encountering a line about the city that captured something essential: it doesn't even sit down. The Long Museum, not Milan or Paris, became the stage — a deliberate statement that the women Max Mara dresses are metropolitan in ways that no longer require Western validation.
The collection that walked the catwalk was a careful negotiation between two design traditions. Knotted silk pankou buttons appeared on jackets. Cheongsam silhouettes were recast in pale stretch wool, stripped of ornament and made office-ready. Standing collars and side-fastening jackets borrowed from Chinese tailoring while staying fluent in Max Mara's language of clean lines. Griffiths was candid about the risk — cultural borrowing can easily become extractive — and said the brand had held extensive consultations before the show to ensure the dialogue felt genuine.
The timing carried weight. Max Mara has been present in China for 33 years, with 27 boutiques in Shanghai alone, long enough to mean something beyond foreign novelty. But the market had shifted. Chinese consumers now account for roughly a quarter of global luxury spending, and the era of treating that market as a passive recipient of Western taste was over. What had risen in its place was guochao — a fashion-forward movement toward styles rooted in local identity, less about nostalgia than about self-determination.
Red threaded through the collection alongside the brand's signature camel. Griffiths spoke about it backstage with care: red in China carries joy and luck, and he described it as so saturated with meaning it approached neutrality. The casting was almost entirely local models. Eileen Gu sat front row. The show made a larger claim — that Max Mara had moved beyond safe dependability to become a brand that listens, one that arrives in Shanghai not to declare what luxury should look like, but to ask.
Ian Griffiths, the British designer steering Max Mara, found his answer in a New Yorker line about Shanghai: the city doesn't even sit down. It was the perfect reason to plant the brand's 75th anniversary show there, in the Long Museum, rather than in Milan or Paris or New York. The choice was deliberate. Max Mara makes clothes for metropolitan women, Griffiths reasoned, and there was something patronizing about assuming those women should want only what the West had decided was luxury.
The collection that walked the Shanghai catwalk was a conversation between two design languages. Knotted silk pankou buttons appeared on jackets. Cheongsam silhouettes emerged in pale stretch wool instead of the traditional floral silk. Side-fastening jackets with standing collars borrowed from Chinese tailoring and spoke in Max Mara's vocabulary of clean lines and professional polish. It was a delicate negotiation, the kind that can easily slip into cliché or worse—the kind of cultural borrowing that feels extractive. Griffiths knew this. He said the brand had held extensive conversations and consultations before the show, wanting to avoid the hollow apology of "we didn't mean to offend."
The timing mattered. Max Mara had been in China for 33 years, with 27 boutiques in Shanghai alone, long enough to have become something more than a foreign brand—it had become a symbol of professional success and social status in the minds of Chinese women. That longevity gave the anniversary show weight it might not otherwise have had. But the market itself was shifting in ways that demanded attention. Chinese consumers now accounted for roughly a quarter of all luxury spending globally, and they were no longer content to be grateful recipients of Western taste. The era of treating China as an ATM, as one analyst might put it, was over.
What was rising instead was guochao—the "national wave." It wasn't nostalgia or patriotic sentiment dressed up in silk. It was something more sophisticated: a fashion-forward movement toward styles rooted in local culture and identity, the same instinct driving young people everywhere to center their own experience rather than adopt someone else's. Max Mara was betting it could channel that spirit of self-confidence. The show's casting was almost entirely local models. Eileen Gu, the Chinese-American Olympic skier, sat front row. The cheongsam, stripped of ornament and rendered in office-ready wool, became a sleek shift dress—familiar and new at once.
The color red threaded through the collection between the camel coats the brand is known for. In China, red means joy and luck. Griffiths spoke about it backstage with the kind of precision that suggested he'd thought about it carefully. Red was primal, he said. It was almost not a color at all—so saturated with meaning it approached neutrality. But he wasn't declaring it the color of the season. There were no trends anymore, he said. Fashion didn't dictate. Everyone chose their own look.
This was the larger claim beneath the show: that Max Mara had moved beyond being safe and dependable, maybe a bit dusty. Recent collections had been built around women who broke ground—the 18th-century mathematician Émilie du Châtelet, the medieval military strategist Matilde di Canossa, the Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf. The brand had dressed the Chinese production of Prima Facie, positioning itself alongside a global conversation about gender and power. The Shanghai show was another chapter in that story, one that said: we see you, we listen, we're not here to tell you what luxury should look like.
Citas Notables
Max Mara is a product for metropolitan women, and it would be patronising to assume that a metropolitan wardrobe should be western-centric.— Ian Griffiths, Max Mara designer
We know that it isn't good enough just to say that we didn't intend to cause offence, so we had lots of conversations and consultations in advance about the designs.— Ian Griffiths
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why Shanghai for the 75th anniversary instead of Milan or Paris?
Because Shanghai is where the conversation is happening now. Max Mara has been in China for 33 years, but the market has changed. Chinese consumers aren't looking for Western validation anymore—they're looking for brands that understand their own cultural moment.
The cheongsam in pale wool instead of silk—was that respectful or was it dilution?
That's the question Griffiths was trying to answer with all those consultations beforehand. He wasn't trying to preserve the cheongsam as a museum piece. He was translating it into the language Max Mara speaks—clean, professional, modern. The point was to say: your aesthetic matters, and it belongs in a contemporary wardrobe.
What's guochao, really? Is it just nationalism wrapped in fashion?
No. It's the opposite of that. It's young people saying: I don't need to look Western to look successful. I can look like myself and be powerful. That's what's shifting the market.
Why does it matter that Chinese consumers are a quarter of global luxury spending?
Because for decades, European brands treated that spending as passive income. Now those consumers have choices, and they're choosing brands that listen. If you treat them like an ATM, they'll find someone else.
The red in the collection—was that a gimmick?
Griffiths didn't think so. He talked about it like he was trying to understand something about color itself. Red in China carries weight. But he wasn't using it as a shortcut. It was woven into the whole idea of the show.