December 30, 2024 |
Of Italy’s dreamy cities, Venice just hits differently, doesn’t it? Mary Shelley called it when she wrote in the early 19th century: “There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.” Peggy Guggenheim understood what all the fuss was about when she arrived in 1948, saying, “To live in Venice, or even to visit it, means you fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else.” And a young Ian Griffiths knew it when he stepped off the train at Venezia Santa Lucia station as a young interrailing club kid in 1985… carrying a watermelon.
“[I was with] my best friend Dawn, who I had met doing architecture [at Manchester Metropolitan University] before I dropped out to become a club kid. We were on our way back from a one-month interrail trip and I didn’t even have a penny in my pocket. I think we only had about £100 for the two of us for a month to start with and, making our way home, that watermelon was all we had. We even slept in the station,” recalls a smiling Griffiths of his first encounter with La Serenissima.
A lot has changed since then. From joining the house in 1987, Griffiths has steered Max Mara to become one of the most beloved luxury fashion houses as its creative director, accompanying women on their sartorial journey from adolescence to adulthood. He’s also taken the lucky fashion press and VIP clients along with him for the ride on trips all over the world to present his collections in a visceral immersion of the history, the arts and the literature that inspire all his collections and with which the Max Mara woman is so synonymous.
And that’s how I found myself stepping off a train in Venezia Santa Lucia one steamy afternoon in June, just like Griffiths did on the same platform nearly 40 years before. This time, I was there to attend his resort 2025 show and experience first-hand the magic of Max Mara that has become his life’s work in the interim.
Leave it to Griffiths to be ahead of his time, as there really is no better way to arrive to Venice than by train. Aside from the majestic advancing across the tracks that connect mainland Italy with the Venetian archipelago, with the waters of the lagoon swooshing on either side, exiting the station feels like walking onto a film set mid-scene.
Griffiths has a way of imbuing women with main-character energy and I had just that as I made my way to the waiting taxi-boat, which was ready to whisk me to the Hotel Monaco and Grand Canal, where I would take up residence for the next two days.
From this point onwards (and I would advise all to do the same), I leant into full tourist mode. Venice isn’t somewhere anyone needs to pretend like they’ve seen it all before. Even if you have, every time feels like the first. There’s an impossible glamour to travelling by water as the norm, so stand up on the taxi-boat, get that gondola, get out your selfie stick and wave to passing vessels even if their inhabitants don’t salute back. Life’s too short to play it cool in a city as magical as this, and anyway, as Griffiths would later tell me, “You’d have to be very jaded to be ‘over’ Venice. I mean, look around. You couldn’t make it up. It’s just so unbelievable. Every time I come, I’m struck by its beauty and magical mystery.”
The itinerary that Griffiths had planned for us encapsulated that sentiment. Over the following days, we would explore the halls of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, home to Titian, Tintoretto and Canaletto’s Venetian works, wander around the Biennale and dine under the porticoes of the Palazzo Ducale. We would also retrace the steps of the illustrious merchant Marco Polo, the cultural polymath whose trailblazing trade accomplishments established Venice as the original luxury epicentre and whose 13th-century travelogue, Il Milione, inspired Griffiths to bring us here, with the show staged on the 700th anniversary of his death.
“The likes of Marco Polo would leave women in charge while they went on trade missions lasting for years; one reason why women in Venice were more privileged and powerful than anywhere else,” he wrote in his show notes (which he always pens himself). “La Serenissima is frequently represented as ‘woman’, embodying justice, harmony, power, progress, loyalty and grace. What better place to show the resort 2025 collection?”
But first, a Select apéritif! If you’re a paid-up member of the Aperol appreciation fanbase – or even the less popular but equally discerning Campari club – then this is your new tipple to tout. A traditional Venetian spritz, a Select was certainly a great way to get the celebrations going as the British press pack assembled in cocktail attire, ready to water-taxi it to the Palazzo Pisani Moretta.
One of the finest examples of Venetian gothic floral style on the Grand Canal, it was the setting for our dinner beneath baroque ceilings and wildly intricate gilding. A table easily measuring 20 metres, adorned in pink and orange chrysanthemums, dahlias and peonies, stretched the length of the grand hall as we dined on fresh scampi risotto and sautéed shrimp. Sitting beneath such history and looking out onto the canal below us, I thought of all the banquets that would have taken place here over the years, earning Venice its reputation as the most wondrous floating city and inspiring countless written accounts before my own. The following morning, I woke early and took a walk around the city to see all the barges dropping off the day’s fresh produce to restaurants, markets and shops before the waterways fill with gondolas; a practice that has remained the same for hundreds of years on days no different to this one.
Griffiths had graciously invited our group to breakfast for a preview of his collection. After a shower and a quick change into the most Max Mara thing I own (a crisp white shirt dress), I headed down to meet him, where talk turned to that formative first encounter with the island.
“When I was a boy, I did my first degree at Manchester Polytechnic [now the Met] where I had to present a collection at the end of the course,” he said. “While I was there, I scraped the money together to buy my interrail ticket, which brought me here. I was so inspired by the mosaics and monumental, dark, gloomy churches, with St. Mark’s [Basilica] being the best example, so when I returned home, my final collection was inspired by all that.”
When planning it, he remembered that his graduate collection was in the attic of his house in London, “so I rooted out all these garments from 1985 and got together with a textile group of graduates who developed prints based on my sketchbook ideas from the time – these form the garments for the finale of the show this evening.”
Appetite suitably whetted, we spent the day hopping on guided tours of galleries like undercover investigators picking up clues to the collection. The decadent belt tassels seen on noble Venetians in Tintoretto’s oil paintings; the flashes of intricate embroidery-like gilding on doorways, handles and lampposts; swathes of velvet jacquard curtains framing every window, and the jewel-like reflections on the water, all set the scene as the sun started to set.
As we took our seats overlooking Piazza San Marco that evening, its bells chimed as they have thousands of times before, although never as the soundtrack to a fashion show. Griffiths had to ask for permission from the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia – the controlling body that manages the floating city’s cultural and artistic heritage – to stage his collection. He presented his case personally last autumn to a board of directors and Max Mara became the first fashion house to stage a catwalk there as a result.
With the lights down low, and Alexa Chung, Brie Larson and Kate Hudson watching from the front row, the day’s discoveries played out.
Glistening gold inserts appeared on fair isle knits; bejewelled seams twinkled on teddy bear coats; shift dresses and shorts resplendent in intricate jacquards; and the tasselled belts of Tintoretto were exaggerated on the majority of looks. “I don’t believe in being overly subtle. If you see something and it works, then do it and use it to create a look,” said Griffiths of channelling such inspiration, adding, “Max Mara isn’t always as minimal as people think.”
On the models’ heads, turban-inspired pieces encapsulating the artistry at play were created by Stephen Jones, a long-term fashion hero of Griffiths, who admitted to having idolised the milliner’s work since those uni days.
Griffiths delved deep into history and literature to research his Venetian extravaganza – see Marco Polo, who famously documented his travels in India, Africa, Mongolia and China; 19th-century classic The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin; 1912 novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann; and the more recent 2006 novel In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant – but a period drama this was not. More a playful renaissance of Max Mara’s elegant codes designed to appeal to young ingénues that dare to dream about wearing clothes like these in places like this.
“I want to speak to young people. I feel much happier speaking to younger people than people my own age, certainly,” said Griffiths, before we dined under the stars in the candlelit courtyard of the Palazzo.
Still dreaming of the previous 36 hours, as I started my journey home the following day, his words rung in my head as I stopped to observe young backpackers hopping off trains in gaggling groups in the station while I waited for my train home. It made me wonder what Griffiths would say to his younger self back in that summer of 1985.
“In those days, if you’d asked me if I would like to stage something creative here, I would have said yes, but it just seemed like an impossible dream,” he had told me over breakfast before I checked out.
So, perhaps I might suggest, dreams do come true?
Photography by John Spyrou. Taken from 10+ Issue 7 – DECADENCE, MORE, PLEASURE – out NOW. Order your copy here.
Creative director IAN GRIFFITHS
Hair PIER PAOLO LAI
Make-up FULVIA FAROLFI
Casting director PIERGIORGIO DEL MORO
