The colonnade of Palazzo ducal in Venice it lights up with the lights of the sunset. Its arches are preparing to welcome the 2025 cruise fashion show Max Mara under the gaze of guest come Kate Hudson, B e Yara Shahidi.
A settlement that arose in a lagoon in northern Italy already in Roman times later became one of the most magical cities in the world, also thanks to astute and ambitious medieval merchants. It seems like every writer who ever lived has tried to describe its beauty and charm.
“There is something so different in Venice, from any other place in the world, that once and for all you leave your usual daily habits and visions to enter an enchanted garden.” wrote Mary Shelley.
Among medieval merchants, the most illustrious was Marco Polo. On the 700th anniversary of his death, the world will witness a series of important exhibitions and events. Marco Polo was an open-minded, curious and tolerant man; some even suggested he was a precursor of feminism. The travelogue he wrote in the XNUMXth century, 'The Million', describes without any judgment the Tartar women and girls who rode in the manner of men and the wonders of the Island of the Females in India where men could visit for just three months a year.
Max Mara follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo with a sumptuous and multicultural collection that also wants to tell something about
magical. Polo lived for twenty years at the court of Kublai Khan, in Mongolia, where camel wool and
cashmere, a commodity that was traded on the Silk Road, the route that every luxury good followed. It is naturally the camel that opens the collection – black, white and light brown – which however also includes silk, in shaded shades, like the one that Marco Polo might have brought from Cathay or Constantinople.
From 'robes de chambre' to parkas, passing through trench coats and tabards: Max Mara offers the most majestic outerwear. There are dresses for special occasions, but there are also large duster coats, elegant tunics, precisely cut suits and jumpsuits for everyday elegance. Maxi tassels and cords, pompous flared sleeves and velvet pannier skirts are the protagonists. To complete the collection, spectacular silk dusters and asymmetrically draped velvet dresses, with prints inspired by the mosaics of San Marco. All completed by a series of headgear inspired by turbans, created in collaboration with the legendary hatter Stephen Jones.
The geographical position of the Serenissima, a commercial crossroads between east and west, has meant that art and architecture
coming from both directions mixed. Pointed arches, elegant ogives and poetic perforations have given life to a style that has something magical. John Ruskin assigns the Doge's Palace and the refined decorations of its loggias the
title of “the central building of the world”. The sumptuous, intricate ornamental leaves of Venetian Gothic are also found in fabrics. Max Mara offers richly woven patterns with stylized floral bouquets and motifs that recall Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and the Chinese philosophical concept of Yin and Yang.
Figures like Marco Polo left women in charge when they were on years-long trade missions – the reason why women in Venice were more privileged and powerful than anywhere else. The Serenissima is often represented as a woman who embodies justice, harmony, power, progress, loyalty and grace. There is no better city to present the Resort 2025 collection than the place where the luxury trade began: Venetia.
