Today’s stage of the Giro d’Italia starts in Santarcangelo di Romagna. It finishes in Reggio Emilia, where MAX MARA, the brainchild of Achille Maramotti and one of the world’s best-known and most popular Made in Italy women’s fashion brands, was born.
The origin of Pret à porter
It all began when Achille, born in 1927 in Reggio Emilia and a law graduate, took up textiles, a family passion shared by his mother, Giulia and passed down by his great-grandmother, Marina Rinaldi. Thanks to his innate entrepreneurial spirit, in 1957, Achille founded a women’s fashion company, introducing American industrial processes into European tailoring culture. It is the start of Pret à Porter in our country, which focuses for the first time on mass-produced outerwear through the use of paper patterns and machinery.
Iconic models
In particular, it is the coat with a masculine allure that Achille Maramotti chooses as the iconic garment for the women’s wardrobe. In the ’70s and ’80s, international designers collaborated on his project, resulting in models capable of marking an era. These include Manuela, a revolutionary camel-coloured coat with a belt at the waist and the double-breasted, masculine-cut model 101801, which soon became a must–have in the world’s women’s wardrobe.
The brand name MAX MARA is the result of putting the superlative MAX before MARA, the short version of the founder’s last name (Maramotti).
A giant in fashion
Today, MAX MARA FASHION GROUP S.r.l still sees the Maramotti family at the helm with Luigi, Ignazio and Ludovica Maramotti. The company is the giant of Made in Italy fashion and, headquartered in the futuristic Via Giulia Maramotti Campus in Reggio Emilia, now sells in hundreds of countries, employs thousands of people and has a turnover of more than 1 billion euros.
Congratulations to those who bring Made in Italy to wardrobes around the world!