From the Scudetto to Silvana Mangano, Max Mara's crazy night in Naples

“ Naples is a complicated city to understand in two days ,” warns Cara, a tour guide and pure Neapolitan. “It’s a city with Greek origins that has become a cultural melting pot over the course of its long history and the many foreign dominations it has suffered.” She details the Byzantine, Angevin, Austrian, and Spanish periods of this essential Mediterranean port. Because “Napoli” is best described by its inhabitants. “ The city has long suffered from a bad reputation due to insecurity and the disorganization of its infrastructure,” agrees Maurizio Marinella , the fourth generation at the helm of the famous Marinella ties, a local know-how acclaimed by the elegant, the powerful, and “ many French presidents ,” he is quick to point out, from Jacques Chirac to Emmanuel Macron. “ But its heritage and its state of mind make it today a fun and very welcoming city.” The Neapolitans and the local authorities understood that they had to structure themselves a little to welcome the whole world, which enjoys our gastronomy, our culture, the atmosphere, especially at this time when we won our fourth Scudetto (the Italian football championship, editor's note)." The tifosi are indeed still in eruption since the coronation of SSC Napoli at the end of May...

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It is therefore a city with the wind in its sails chosen by Max Mara to present its 2026 cruise collection. If Ian Griffith, its discreet artistic director for almost forty years, fell in love with the cradle of pizza, it is not (only) for its culinary specialty or to follow in the footsteps of My Brilliant Friend (Elena Ferrante's tetralogy adapted for Netflix), but for its post-war cinema, the golden age of Cinecittà which often set up its cameras there. " What city is more Italian than Naples seen from abroad?" he asks. And to cite Vittorio De Sica's The Gold of Naples (1954), featuring its teeming alleys and the iconic Silvana Mangano and Sophia Loren. " I never tire of their beauty, their passion and their incredible allure, also in Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow ( De Sica, 1963) or Anna (by Alberto Lattuada, 1951)... But I'll stop there because I could talk to you about their filmography for hours! " confided the Briton, during an informal lunch with the French press, before the show.

This dandy , so chic down to the very tip of his made-in-Italy suits, also speaks at length about a very famous photo by Ruth Orkin, American Girl in Italy . " As its name indicates, in the photo taken in 1951 - the year Max Mara was founded - this girl walking on a sidewalk in Florence under the gaze of men, is American. But her haughty bearing, her rebellious charm has always embodied for me this very Italian chic. It is this Italianness that I wanted to breathe into this show. " Before readily acknowledging that between the elegance of the s ciura of the North (where the brand was founded) and the sexy look of the ragazza of the South (where its show is held), there is a world... " that the wardrobe you will see this evening tries to reconcile."

At dusk, between dog and wolf, the 300 Max Mara guests take their places under the monumental marble of the Reggia di Caserta, the royal palace of the Bourbons of the Two Sicilies, the rival of Versailles in the Age of Enlightenment. Facing the grand staircase and under the gaze of the impressive statues of Royal Majesty , Merit and Truth, a model advances. No princess clothes, but a look both androgynous and sensual consisting of a small short bustier, micro shorts and a matching gray wool jacket. The beauty, wearing a wide-brimmed borsalino hat, wears camel leather fishing thigh boots evoking the torrid "mondine" played by Silvana Mangano in Bitter Rice (by Giuseppe De Santis, 1949).

What follows is a typically Max Mara wardrobe. Coats to die for - as is natural for the camel coat label, the 10181, invented by Anne Marie Beretta in 1981 and still a bestseller - but also straight skirts below the knee or with a mid-calf corolla line, masculine suits cut with lightness to fit the feminine body, tie-print pajamas made with Marinella, cashmere evening dresses adorned with sparkles, knitted cardigans tilted over the shoulders, tops with whalebones and other silk negligees that add just the right amount of voluptuousness to this preppy wardrobe... Among the audience, our national Laetitia Casta, Sharon Stone and Gwyneth Paltrow applaud the sixty or so silhouettes that reappear on a remix of Una Notte a Napoli . A wild night that we have no doubt will have put a blush on the cheeks of the " notable woman " that the founder of the brand, Achille Maramotti, had decided to dress after the war.