LIFE: The Man Behind Max Mara

CHIAVARI, Italy - In 1951, when Achille Maramotti was 24 years old, he had an idea. His idea was to manufacture coats. This may not seem particularly revolutionary to us now, but in post war Italy most clothes were made by hand, either at home or by a dressmaker. And as for Achille Maramotti, he was hardly a household name, no one had ever heard of him or his soon to be world famous label, Max Mara either.  But he persisted.

 

 Max Mara Fall/Winter 2015/2016

Beginning with one coat and one suit, he sold his designs through fabric shops in his home town of Reggio Emilia, a town not far from Bologna, in Emilia Romagna. He sold to women who didn’t have the need, or the money, to buy copies of the haute couture styles from Paris that most Italian dressmakers followed. 

Maramotti was no stranger to the process of dressmaking. His mother, who had been left a widow at a young age with four children to raise, had started a dressmaking school in Reggio. He knew it was a labor intensive craft and a single coat could take more than 18 hours to make.

 Achille Maramotti

That was not what Maramotti wanted. He wanted to take advantage of the industrial boom that was spreading across post-war Italy and create a coat that could be mass produced and sold at a price the average woman could afford.

He took the traditional close fitting style that Italian women were used to wearing, a style that required individual tailoring, and deconstructed it. He created a simple, classic coat with clean design and razor-sharp tailoring in a traditional color – camel. He didn’t know it at the time, but his idea would revolutionize the coat industry around the world.

Now that he had the design, all he needed was the technology so Achille Maramotti, and his Max Mara label, went to America. In America’s post World War II boom, New York had become the national hub of apparel manufacturing. When he returned to Italy Maramotti didn’t waste any time streamlining the entire Max Mara operation. The coat that used to take 18 hours to make, now only required two. You might say he was Italy's Henry Ford, only instead of mass producing cars, Maramotti produced coats.

Achille Maramotti died in 2005 and the company is now managed his three children, Luigi, the CEO; Maria Ludovica, in charge of product development; and Ignazio, managing director.

 

Milan Fashion Week 2015

The company is still run just as Archille intended. The Max Mara label is still a co-op, with no one person getting the credit for the products. Achille Maramotti believed everyone plays an important part in the creation of a garment, from the textile designers to the machinists. Over the years, big names like Karl Lagerfeld; Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana; Narciso Rodriguez; Jean-Charles Castelbajac and other star designers have been called in for their input, and they all contribute anonymously.

Just as Achille Maramotti dreamed it would be, the company is a model of technology, yet the philosophy of maintaining a heritage that goes back to the days of the Renaissance is very much alive. For example, before fabric is cut, it is left to ‘season’ like fine wine, a traditional technique that insures the final garment will hold its shape. 

 

 Max Mara Week End

When asked about this, CEO Luigi Maramotti explained that “while technology helps people be the best they can be, there is nothing that can replace the skill of the human brain and hand. A person may not work as fast as a machine, but no machine can secure buttons as well as a human.” 

But it is more than technology. It’s that fine Italian hand at work making something very simple look very chic. It’s knowing how to add the right jewelry, the right scarf, pull up a sleeve even how to hold a handbag. It’s the history, the feeling for beauty and elegance, simple elegance. Classic elegance.

 

 Max Mara's Classic Camel Coat

It seems to work. Achille Maramotti, and his Max Mara label, transformed Reggio Emilia into the coat capital of the world. He gave birth to Max Mara and Max Mara has thrived and grown into the Max Mara Fashion Group with 35 different labels and more than 2,000 stores across the globe.

Some of the most popular labels within the Fashion Group are Max Mara, Marella, Sportmax, Pennyblack, Marina Rinaldi (a plus size line named after Archille’s great, great, grandmother), and Max & Co., Today the Max Mara Fashion Group generates over a billion dollars a year in revenue and sales of the original classic camel coat that started it all, are still going strong.

LIFE: Creating Beauty - Battista 'Pinin" Farina

 SARONNO, Italy – There is an instinctive quality, an innate ability to grasp the soul of an object that some product designers have. It is the secret ingredient that separates design leaders from design followers, and Battista Farina, better known as Pinin Farina, car designer extraordinaire, had this talent. He single handedly reinvented the concept of the auto, moving it from a square box on wheels to a thing of beauty.

 Battista 'Pinin' Farina

In March 2002, Battista "Pinin" Farina was inducted into the European Automotive Hall of Fame in Geneva, Switzerland.  He is in the company of other dedicated men who have made automotive history: Henry Ford; the Michelin brothers Andrè and Edouard; and the man who built the first practical high-compression engine with an ignition, Nikolaus Otto. "The influence of Pinin Farina on the automotive industry,” wrote Rick Johnson, Editor of Automotive News Europe, “has been profound. Thanks to the combination of genius, courage and farsighted determination, men like Pinin Farina set the standard for the world of the car."  Yes, indeed they did.  

In the early 1900’s Pinin Farina was just a young boy. While in the rest of the world the industrial revolution was in full swing, Italy was still an agricultural society. But life on the farm was becoming more and more difficult and many families, including Mr. and Mrs. Farina and their 11 children, moved from the peaceful countryside to the busy northern Italian city of Turin, to find work.

1905 Queen Model E Touring 

It was a time of technical exploration, and mechanization was rapidly changing people's lives, even if not all of the new developments were greeted with open arms.The future was uncertain and many new inventions, like the airplane, were thought to have no future at all. Even the auto was looked at as a  passing fancy, a plaything for the privileged few as there were few autos being built and they were very expensive. 

But Pinin was convinced that the wave of the future was in the engineering industry, and that the noisy, smelly jalopies would quickly become an integral part of society. He was not alone. Others, like Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat; Vincenzo Lancia; and later still, Henry Ford thought so as well.  But the style of the times, like the architects and designers who created them, had come out of the old school of design. Their projects were overly decorated, cluttered, primped and festooned with needless ornaments. It was a look Pinin detested. He had other ideas. He thought cars should be clean and beautiful, and once beautiful, he believed they would take on an identity of their own.

Goddess of Speed Hood Ornament on an Early Fraschini Isotta Auto

In the early thirties, even though Italy was still a poor and backward country, things were starting to change. New products started appearing in the marketplace. Men and women started wearing the latest fashions. In this practically motionless old-world society, Italy was changing. The radio became the medium of the masses, bringing news of the world into people's homes, and young film directors like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini  started packing them in at the local movie houses on Saturday nights. 

Along with these changes came changes in car designs. The Fiat 1500, the Topolino 500 and the 1100 and the Lancia Aprilia came out, one after the other. The square, sober shapes started to give way to low-slung, racy, rounded lines. Tastes were changing and autos were no longer just playthings for the wealthy.  People were on a quest for speed. After centuries of slow they wanted to go faster, they wanted go faster immediately.    

 1936 Astura - My Dream Car

Pinin Farina was also fascinated with the idea of speed. He reasoned that the principles of aerodynamics were the most natural way to solve the automobile's identity problem. He took a Lancia chassis and with a combination of traditional Italian style and ideas that grew out of a visit to Detroit, he developed a new version of the Astura. The results were dramatic. He was on a roll.

As soon as World War II ended, he set up a workshop/laboratory in Torino. He named his new venture Pininfarina, combining his first and last names. The workshop started turning out a series of outstanding auto bodies, and it didn't take long before the company began to attract a great deal of international attention.  In 1947 he presented the Cistalia 202 SC to the public and it was quickly declared a work of art, a "rolling sculpture". The original model was placed on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it still is today.

 1947 Cistalia

After the success of the Cistalia,  he presented prototypes of two other autos, the Bentley and the American Nash.  A couple of years later, when Pinin Farina went back to the United States to launch his new models, he was thrilled to see his name and fame as an international designer used as the basis of  Nash's national advertising campaign.  As soon as the new Nash was introduced to the American public, photographers and journalists started chasing him as never before. He had become a celebrity.  But the best was yet to come. 

Pinin Farina has often said that when he started working with Enzo Ferrari back in 1951, he had no idea where the relationship would take him. Ferrari, the irascible motor guru from Maranello who was also captivated by speed, was fascinated by the aerodynamic bodies Pinin Farina was designing. They struck a deal.

Fame and Fortune American Style

The task of designing the Ferrari car bodies was turned over to Pinin's son, Sergio. Starting with the Ferrari 212 Inter Cabriolet in 1952 to the 550 Barchetta Pininfarina in 2002, the autos produced through a half a century of the Ferrari-Farina collaboration are beautiful enough to leave even the most die-hard taxi takers like me breathless. Ferrari would later reluctantly admit that the jump in auto sales from 81 in 1956 to 1,246 just five years later was most likely due to the Pininfarina designs. 

The list of exceptional cars designed by Pininfarina is much too long for this short space, but names like 1990 Alfa Romeo Spider, 1993 Coupè Fiat, 1992 Ferrari 456 GT can't be ignored.  But the story doesn't end there. The Pininfarina name is on just about everything that moves, from buses and trams to trucks, motorcycles, and even Lavazza coffee machines, Italy's Telecom Sirio 2000 Basic Telephone, Mizuno golf clubs, Snaidero Ola kitchens, and yes, just about every automobile worth talking about.

LIFE: The Happy Couple

SARONNO, Italy - Andrea and his girlfriend are going to move in together. He bought an apartment almost a year ago, but for reasons I don’t really understand the deal isn’t going to close until sometime next month. In the meantime he has been halfheartedly shopping for furniture and attending to all the last minute details.

I don’t know how much input his girlfriend has had in choosing the furnishings, but I don’t think she’s had very much. He told me once that she wanted to furnish the apartment with antiques but he was leaning more towards less permanent furnishings, aka cheap stuff. Not too cheap, but not investment furniture either. He said he had asked his mother and his aunt to shop around for him and come up with some decorating ideas, and from the way he said it I understood that was the way it was going to be. There was one point, however, that the girlfriend was insisting on. She wants a clothes dryer.

“I don’t see the need for it,” he said to me. “My mother and my grandmother never had a clothes dryer and they got along just fine. You wash your clothes, you hang them up, the next day they are dry. And if you hang them out on the balcony they may even dry the same day. Beside, where are we going to put it? The apartment isn’t that big. There is space for a washing machine, but a clothes dryer? I don’t think so.”

I think the problem is cultural. Andrea’s girlfriend isn’t Italian. Where she comes from people need clothes dryers because it rains a lot and the winters are long and harsh. Another part of the problem is that Andrea does not think of this apartment as his “forever” apartment. That is also the reason why he does not want to invest in “forever” furniture. He knows it is only temporary, and unfortunately I don’t think the girlfriend does.

Andrea’s brother also bought an apartment recently, but he did buy a “forever” apartment, which loosely translated means an apartment with two bedrooms, one for him and his girlfriend, and another for any future children they may have.

The last time I saw Andrea I asked him if the dryer issue had been resolved and he said yes. He had given in and it would be part of their new life together. So that’s one for the girlfriend. But how she’s going to feel living in an apartment decorated by Andrea’s mother and his aunt, well that’s another question, and not one I’m going even going to try to get near.
The idea that Italians don’t embrace clothes dryers in quite the same way as Americans do has come up before. The most recent discussion took place when my Best Friend was here. She just didn’t get the Italians resistance to such a fundamental part of life. And no amount of me spouting eco-explanations or cultural differences could dissuade her from her pro-dryer stand.

It wasn’t as if I was asking her to abandon her dryer and drape her clothes on a rack when she's at home, all I was saying was this is a different country and they do things differently here. Last week I found out how that all translated when, in a casual conversation, she told me that she had been asked to speak at her local elementary school again this year as part of Grandparents day. Last year she was a big hit with her talk on what it was like growing up with 10 brothers and sisters. This year she talked about her trip to Italy. Part of what she told the eager 9 year olds was that everyone in Italy lives in a condominium and that Italians don’t have dryers because they don’t have the electricity for it. They don’t have 220. 

Like the question about how Andrea’s girlfriend is going to like living in an apartment decorated by his mother and aunt, I’m not going to get near my BF’s version of the dryer story either, especially since we spent half a day shopping for a new hair curler for her because her hair curler, which runs on 110, would not work here without a converter as we only have 220. I confess, I’m as confused as I have ever been, or maybe even just a little bit more.