The Empire Of Beauty

A time-lapse. Ian Griffiths and Giorgio Guidotti in a two-voice tale of the brand’s Resort 2021, a collection inspired by fabulous reminiscences of imperial Russia and put together amid lockdown dictated urgencies

- Serena Larosa

Fashion is what happens to you while you’re busy making other projects. “Last March we were in Saint Petersburg, for an inspection. As soon as we came back, the lockdown started,” recalls Ian Griffiths, the creative director of Max Mara. We are now in the Milan showroom and he is telling me, along with Giorgio Guidotti, PR & Communication president of the group, about the new Resort 2021 collection, which will hit shops from November 2020. Named Reason and Romance, it was conceived amidst the ancient splendour of Russian palaces and realised in the suspended period of a totally unexpected exile caused by the pandemic.

Every resort is a journey. “Ian came up with the idea of Saint Petersburg that triggered my memory of a book I read years ago, about the Yusupov family,” adds Guidotti, “I brought it to Ian the day after as I kept it in my place; I never throw books away”.

The story of the Yusupovs is indeed worthy of a Russian novel. He: Felix Yusupov, the only heir of one of the richest families in Russia, fell in love with her: Irina Romanova, the irresistibly beautiful niece of the Tsar. In 1914, the couple had the glitziest of weddings and embarked on a happy ever after that lasted the rest of their lives. Griffiths was charmed by the book: “Felix was a very enigmatic figure, at night he dressed as a woman and went out to perform in cabarets. There are these official portraits of Irina, but if you take a closer look at them, you realise they could be Felix... I love that androgynous look.”