Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and Maria Callas inspire Max Mara Atelier’s ‘determined and dynamic’ winter collection

‘Decisive, determined, dynamic and resolute individuals,’ is how MaxMara Atelier describes the icons on its storyboard for A/W 2025, ‘Portrait of Radical Women’. With Diana Vreeland, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Maria Callas, Jackie Kennedy and her socialite cousin Edith Bouvier Bale (better known as Little Edie) featured in the line-up, it neatly encapsulates the group of women who collectively wrote the rulebook on timeless style with an easy attitude.

It also defines the spirit of Max Mara Atelier, where fashion director, Laura Lusuardi, has been quietly honing the look for Max Mara’s haute couture offering for the last 16 years. While Ian Griffiths has designed the brand’s biannual ready-to-wear collections since 1985, Lusuardi – who started her design career at MaxMara in 1965 – has been the heart and hand behind Max Mara Atelier since its inception in 2009, establishing it as a collector’s favourite by dedicating her sole attention to a singular garment each season: the coat.

‘Every season we completely change the inspiration and the silhouettes so each coat is a one-of-a-kind piece and you can collect something very special,’ Lusuardi told Wallpaper* at an early preview of the 16-piece collection in Naples this summer. ‘Each [coat in the collection] is also different from the other to represent different women, or the many different sides of the same woman.’

For A/W 2025, Lusuardi’s process started as it always does, by immersing herself in researching volume and construction in tandem with the fabrics. ‘The fabric is really important as it must be absolutely coherent with the style and the story I want to create with each coat,’ she explains.

This season, she evolved the Atelier playbook opting for precious Scottish jacquards, sumptuous felted wools, and cashmere and mohair chinés to craft her cast of silhouettes that run the gamut from enveloping and oversized to cinched and streamlined, crafted by blending elements of bespoke Savile Row tailoring with agile avant-garde experimentation.

Her passion for the latter led her to discover a technical polyester that she says was perfect to preserve the integrity of the Redingote coat’s precision pleats; an intricate silk-blend devoré velvet applied to wool-crepe using a technique that creates an animal-print effect for the Spotted coat; and a new feather-soft nappa leather for the distressed Biker bomber-style that has been included to be a more versatile year-round alternative.

‘I’m always looking forward and undertaking lots of research looking for the best way, I never say something is OK when it could be better,’ she says. The result is one of innovation-meets-classic-outerwear codes, with each coat more luxurious to the touch than the next. ‘When you try it on, it should feel like a second skin. And once you try it on, you should never want to take it off.’

In authentic haute couture fashion, it’s ‘the details for our clients to discover little by little’, that elevate each Atelier collection, says Lusuardi. This season, she selected nude satin for the lining and buttons have been crafted from lacquered woven leather, horn, and Swarovski crystals. As is customary for the Atelier collection, stitching is selectively revealed in scarlet red (‘the fil rouge’ as the brand refers to it), a quiet but distinctive signature that denotes the excellence of the hand-touch of the dedicated design team at the brand’s Reggio Emilia HQ where 80 per cent of the collection is handmade.

‘It’s important to remember that they are not just coats, there is a story behind them – people who have made them and created the fabric,’ smiles Lusuardi. ‘This for us is really important, the art behind them.’

Lusuardi’s enthusiasm stretches beyond the world of design. The designer can be regularly found at Max Mara flagships around the world, waiting to assist clients with finding their perfect investment and help them style it.

‘At MaxMara, how we wear the coat is like a tradition,’ says Lusuardi, who cinches sleeves, pops collars and places hands in pockets to get a feel for how a woman will wear theirs. ‘That’s the modernity of wearing a coat right now.’

‘The most satisfaction I get is to watch a client try on a coat,’ she says. ‘These are real clothes for real women, not just to go to the Oscars or the red carpet. When I try a coat on a woman, everything has to be perfect.’

maxmara.com