Eye: Max Mara Creative Director Ian Griffiths Talks Judy Chicago + Bad-Ass Successful Women

Liu Wen for Max Mara SS 2019 Collection

“I’ve been described as the most influential designer you’ve never heard of,” Ian Griffiths , Creative Director of Max Mara for 31 years told Harper’s Bazaar Australia in an interview published online December 9. Griffiths’ anonymity was about to be blown, when US House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — soon to be Madame Speaker again — wore her 2013 brick red Max Mara coat to a December 11 budget-funding showdown at the White House.

Hours later, Pelosi and her ‘Fire Coat’ were total bad-ass legend as big names clamored to know where to buy her coat. Griffiths stepped out of the shadows to talk his vision for confident, powerful women to Pelosi’s posse. His comments in the Harper’s interview echo the sentiments he expressed in announcing that Pelosi’s coat was headed back to stores in the next collection.

Max Mara Creative Director Ian Griffiths

“I went into fashion to get satisfaction from dressing women, “ Griffiths explained to HB’s Grace O’Neill. "The ego can be a very dangerous thing sometimes."

"You need to have the maturity to design yourself out of a garment," is how Ian explains it. "I don't want a person to look at a thing I've designed and say 'Wow, what a clever designer!' I want the thing itself to be beautiful but simple and wearable. It's a bit like what architects do, they go through this entire process to end up with something that is totally simple but just works, without trying to show off her clever he or she is."

The Guardian interviewed Griffiths in June 2018, describing Max Mara as that rare thing: “ a fashion-week label whose heart is in the real world. “ Don’t assume, though, that Ian doesn’t do the unexpected. The designer cast hijab-wearing model Halima Aden in his February 2018 show, joining the Alberta Ferretti collection in a runway first.

Halima Aden for Max Mara FW 2018 Collection

On December 4, Griffiths further defined the Max Mara woman as “successful. She’s made it on her own terms and she wants to be taken seriously.” Those words certainly describe Nancy Pelosi. The designer talked with Town & Country about Max Mara’s collab with Judy Chicago, and their release of a tee shirt to promote the artist’s major retrospective at the ICA Miami.

“As a long standing feminist artist who has found a powerful voice, Judy is the ideal partner for Max Mara—the collaboration is a reminder that classic does not mean conservative.”

One of her seminal pieces, ‘Bigamy Hood’, a painted car hood, served as inspiration for the t-shirt collab with Max Mara. Chicago described the collaboration as “an exciting challenge that required a considerable amount of time, creativity, and drawings.” The resulting design is what Griffiths calls “iconic Judy Chicago” but in a “classic Max Mara palette,” meaning a wearable, but still playfully radical t-shirt. “It underlines the brand’s commitment to the empowerment of women,” Griffiths says.

Judy Chicago’s ‘Bigamy Hood’ artwork inspired her collab with Max Mara

We note that the original artwork for ‘Bigamy Hood’ is more directly interpreted in the Judy Chicago tableware that greeted guests to Max Mara’s Art Basel dinner party at Miami’s Soho House. Interviewed by Vanity Fair’s H.W. Vail, Chicago addressed the emblazoned plates with a dominant phallus imagery centerstage, saying: ““Usually I’m asked about the vaginal imagery in my work—it’s so refreshing! I went to auto-body school. I was the only woman and there were 250 men.” Chicago, looking over her shoulder to confirm some art world notable was within earshot, then said pointedly, “And actually at ICA I’m the only woman in the building —oh except Louise Bourgeois. I’m in very good company.”

Chicago also sees no conflict in using her artwork for commercial products. "I prefer marketing feminism instead of patriarchy!” she said to the guests, who raised their glasses of Ruinart. Later, as Tiramisu was passed around, Chicago whispered, “Just wait till you see the beach towels.”

Collage from Max Mara’s Art Basel December 2018 dinner at Soho House for artist Judy Chicago.