What Women Really Want

Max Mara

It was a deceptively simple idea: make real clothes for real women. Such was Achille Maramotti’s mission when he started Max Mara in 1951 with the vision to introduce American manufacturing efficiency to postwar Italy, making high-quality clothes more widely available to women without a couturier on speed dial. For 75 years that MO has powered this independent family business—and catapulted it into what the tech bros would call unicorn status. Of course, those iconic camel coats had a lot to do with it, and in honor of the anniversary, a new collection joins the ranks—but more on that later.

“Like most ideas, the simplest ones really are the best,” says Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths, who joined the company in 1987. “And Achille’s idea—it seems so banal as to be dull, but it has proved to be an absolutely indispensable mantra. It’s my guiding principle: Can I imagine the Max Mara woman wearing it?”

Max Mara

Max Mara

As much as the world has changed, that Max Mara woman has remained remarkably consistent. She is, to put it bluntly, Low-Key Rich Bitch incarnate, originator of that aesthetic eons before the term entered the lexicon. Even as the greater forces of fashion moved on, at lightning speed, from sotto voce eleganza to ’90s grunge to nerdcore to whatever microtrend the algorithm churns out next, the Max Mara woman has continued to live and dress by these foundational codes.

“There is no such thing as fashion now, and I really think trends just don’t exist anymore,” Griffiths says. “So what’s the point in doing what everyone else is doing? A woman decides for herself what her style is.” It’s an approach so straightforward it feels radical. But for those who have been paying attention, women have always made perfectly clear what they actually want. And from Max Mara that is, among other things, a fabulous camel coat.

The Metric ($7,590)

Max Mara

The Millenia ($7,590)

Max Mara

The Meridian ($8,390)

Max Mara

The brand established its supremacy in this category early in its history, at a time when camel coats were firmly entrenched in the culture as menswear staples, symbols of male authority and status. Max Mara flipped the script. “It must have been quite revolutionary, because women just didn’t wear men’s clothes back then, and these coats were distinctly masculine,” Griffiths says, noting the twist of irony that nowadays men are almost as voracious for Max Mara coats as women. “It has come full circle.”

Richard Avedon/Courtesy Max Mara

Maggie Rizer in the Millenia, shot by Richard Avedon c. 1998.

And the circle is expanding. In honor of its 75th anniversary, Max Mara is reissuing three coats from the archives: 1998’s Millenia, made famous by that year’s Richard Avedon campaign; the belted Metric, from 2015; and 1994’s cape-style Meridian. It is the brand’s manifesto told in three chapters (and a limited run—just 200 of each will be made, available only at select stores around the world, including the Madison Avenue flagship).

“These coats are as valid today as they were then in terms of their allure, design, and style,” Griffiths says. “Timeless isn’t the same as anonymous, just as classic doesn’t have to mean conservative.” While we’re at it, perhaps it’s also time to divorce the idea of Max Mara as quiet luxury. “What’s quiet about walking into a room dressed head to toe in camel cashmere? It’s quite a statement, really.”

This story appears in the November 2026 issue of Town & Country.

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Leena Kim is Town & Country’s Senior Editor, covering the travel, jewelry, style, arts and culture, education, and weddings beats. She has no priors—she has been at the magazine since 2013, having started her career at T&C as the assistant to the editor in chief.

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