Max Mara Spring 2023 Collection with Adut, Annemary, Dara by Ethan James Green
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Max Mara Spring 2023 Collection with Adut, Annemary, Dara by Ethan James Green AOC Fashion
Max Mara’s Spring-Summer 2023 campaign has sophisticated swagger. Models trio Adut Akech, Annemary Aderibigbe and Dara Allen step it up to remind us that they are far more than muses or mannequins. Fashion editor Tonne Goodman styles the shoot — a collection of sophisticated essentials with discreet details that she herself would wear — in images photographed by Ethan James Green [IG].
Women and Swagger
Looking at the images immediately took me back to December 2018, when former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi exited a tough meeting with then president Donald Trump.
Pelosi was wearing the 2013 Max Mara ‘Fire Coat’ in red, and I thought ‘Beale Street’ director Barry Jenkins was about to lose his mind. The coat was recycled for the occasion, after Pelosi wore it for the first time at the second inauguration of Barack Obama as America’s president in January 2013.
The shot of Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer leaving a hard-as-nails meeting with Trump went viral, generating such digital heat that Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths responded that the coat would be reissued.
AOC has always liked Ian Griffiths because he’s a male designer willing to explore his own contradictions. He does just that in speaking about the 2023 campaign inspired by the French Riviera. Griffiths has not been caught up in trying to make women ‘its’ or ‘theys’, degendering us in such a way that the very concept of women’s rights is no longer necessary. We’re all humans, no need to discuss the failure of mostly — but not exclusively — men to acknowledge women’s inequality.
Griffiths realized that those same women — Natália Correia, Renée Perle and Elizabeth Grey — were nailed to his own inspiration boards. Once again the focus was not on the achievements of the women themselves but how they served as his muses for the Spring 2023 collection and these very ads.
Not very many men achieve this level of clarity on this uber-complex set of contradictions between the roles of men and the roles of women.
My initial thought as we close was Coco Chanel promoting trousers and her deep connection to the French Riviera. But now the secrets of the Mediterranean and buried treasures of women’s history are on my mind. ~ Anne
