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Ian Griffiths’ eureka moment came one day, more than a decade ago, when he was perusing Max Mara’s sprawling archive in Reggio Emilia, a world-class trove which holds more than 300,000 pieces: sketches, fabrics, garments and rare objects from fashion’s last century.
“Set across three floors, with tens of thousands of pieces hanging in acclimatised museum conditions, the thing that always strikes me about the archive is that it’s so quiet,” the creative director recounts to GRAZIA. “There are long, long passageways lined with garments on both sides. They are all hidden behind black curtains. Everything is divided according to its year and season but it is still very time consuming—especially when you are looking for a specific thing—because you tend to find something else that side-tracks you.”
Searching that fateful day for inspiration, Griffiths came across yards of plush, long-pile used to make Max Mara’s Teddy Bear Coats in the 80s. As Griffiths reminds me, he began working for the company as a design graduate in 1987, at the tail end of Teddy’s great reign, and so while it wasn’t the now-creative director’s first introduction to the coat, he knew he had stumbled upon a moment in time so iconic that it could be reimagined and re-birthed.
“What struck me when I rediscovered [the Teddy Bear coats] was the volume created by the long-pile,” says Griffiths. “Coats were big in the 80s, and the Teddies were the biggest, but I wanted to go bigger still with a volume that you could really see. I could hardly believe that no one had thought to use this amazing fabric again—it has all the glamour of a faux fur, but it’s more luxurious because it’s made from noble materials. And as a result, it’s incredibly cuddlesome.
“[In the archive that day] I saw the potential to create a coat that would capture the zeitgeist.”
And that he did. Working with an Italian fabric company, Griffiths developed a unique, modern version of the Teddy—one with a softer fabric (which took 18 months to perfect) and one cut and constructed with an ingenious sleeve which showed off the fabric’s abundant volume. In 2013, Griffiths’ luxurious, opulent new style, made from extremely soft wool and alpaca and camel fibres on a silk base, hit the runway. The perfect balance between glamour and functionality, the Teddy Bear coat has been worn and sought by well-dressed women forevermore.
SHOP A MAX MARA TEDDY BEAR COAT NOW
Ten years on, Griffith’s Teddy Coat holds icon status. But after all this time, how do you evolve a classic? What influences its different iterations season-after-season?
“From Bauhaus to Marilyn to 18th century France, whatever is inspiring me will always spark off an idea,” says Griffiths. “I let ideas come to me. Ideas are like cats; it you go after them too aggressively, they slip away from you.
“Why is the Teddy still as popular as it was in 2013? Because it gives an endless cuddle and in a big, bad, scary world, we all want a cuddle,” he adds. “And at the same the Teddy is blingy. It says, ‘Look at me, look what I have got’.”
As for other treasures Griffiths found in the archive that same day, he’s not telling.
“I’ve always got a little hoard of ideas in a corner of my brain but it’s marked ‘Top Secret!’” he jokes. “I don’t want to spoil the surprise when it is time to reveal them. I don’t think any other brand has an archive as rich and as extensive as Max Mara’s; it’s a constant source of inspiration.”
With the storied works of Anne-Marie Beretta, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Karl Lagerfeld in the archive, as well as fashion from the 20th century and beyond, indeed, Griffiths is probably correct.
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Peruse the Teddy coat’s evolution below.
