SOFT ARMOUR

For Autumn/Winter 2025, Max Mara presents a meditation on duality, a study in contrast that captures the tension and tenderness of contemporary womanhood. Creative Director Ian Griffiths turns his gaze toward the windswept moors of Brontëan imagination, reinterpreting the Gothic temperament through a modern lens.

Sleek, self-assured and composed, the heroine of Max Mara’s story encounters the world with quiet confidence. Years of control and precision have brought her success, yet beneath her composure lies a restless longing for passion and freedom. She craves romance, deep and dramatic, the chiaroscuro romance of the Brontës.

The Show collection captures this dual spirit of discipline and desire. Sculptural tailoring and rich texture evoke a world of literary melancholy, while fluid drapery and layered silhouettes suggest movement and release. Great coats with military inflection, squire-like frock coats and enveloping clutch coats define her armour; soft cashmere, lustrous drape and featherlight worsteds reveal her tenderness. The palette of Cascia, a signature hue that moves from stone to sky recalls the rugged beauty of Yorkshire, the landscape of the Brontës’ imagination.

This is Gothic romanticism reimagined for the present, refined by urban sensibility and grounded in lived reality. It is made for the woman who shapes her own mythology with quiet authority, whose strength is inseparable from her vulnerability.

Captured within a London residence defined by oak, shadow and light, the accompanying imagery mirrors her complexity. Each frame portrays the Max Mara woman as cerebral, self-possessed and unapologetically human.

In AW25, Max Mara reaffirms its mastery of contrast and cohesion. The meeting of neo-Gothic romanticism and modern realism reveals a vision of femininity that feels entirely alive in the contemporary world.