Soft POWER

MAX MARA is a byword for POWER DRESSING, but its steadfast commitment to HIGH-QUALITY, TRENDLESS CLOTHING has won the brand a NEW GENERATION of RADICAL FANS

- RACHEL TASHJIAN

In a world of mixed messages, the Italian brand Max Mara is uniquely synonymous with power. As Angelina Jolie evolved her image to include humanitarian work as well as her acting, she made Max Mara's pencil skirts and wrap coats staples of her wardrobe. When Meghan Markle's celebrity shifted from soundstage to world stage, she relied on an assortment of unfussy button-up silk blouses and mouthwateringly soft outerwear. And when Nancy Pelosi, soon to be the Speaker of the House, exited a contentious meeting at the White House with then-president Donald Trump in 2018, she was cocooned in a sleek red funnel-neck coat that gained viral acclaim as the "fire coat."

These are clothes designed to empower and also recede behind the wearer in their crisp correctness, to ensure her image won't be cluttered by any competing message from a fashion designer.

And this is the kind of clothing Max Mara makes. You will never see a Max Mara collection that's in conversation with what's happening at Gucci, Prada, or other luxury brands that inspire biannual changes in sleeves, hem lengths, and color palettes. You won't spot the Max Mara logo anywhere but the tag of a garment. The brand does not build a world and invite you to participate in its fantasies; it sees the world that its woman-well-off, well-heeled, and well-positioned-lives in and designs for her reality.

Max Mara's clothes imbue their wearer with a feeling of security, of confidence in her own power, a magic trick most directly associated with those aforementioned coats. Long a fashioninsider status symbol, the wool and cashmere ones, in resolutely simple wrap shapes or sumptuous double-breasted cuts, are often compared to the Hermès Kelly bag or the Burberry trench coat because of how they serve as an emblem for the brand. Still, like the rest of Max Mara's clothes, they are discreet, a kind of anonymous armor.