Achille Maramotti founded his own fashion company in 1951 in the northern Italian provincial capital Reggio nell'Emilia. After a few years, the name changed followed, by which the company is known to this day: Max Mara. The earl Max from Reggio served as inspiration for the pseudonym, as did the abbreviation of the founder's surname. Although Maramotti's great-grandmother was a seamstress and his mother ran a tailoring school, Achille Maramotti first decided to study law before laying the foundation of his empire.
Seeing the future in mass-produced designer fashion, Maramotti founded the Max Mara factory in 1959. The combination of American manufacturing, French haute couture and Italian tailoring passed down through his family for generations made Max Mara under the leadership of well-known designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Franco Moschino.
In 1981, Anne-Marie Beretta designed what is still iconic today, the Max Mara double-breasted wool coat '101801'. The oversized coat's proportions have made the timeless classic the brand's most iconic model around the world. 17 years later, Beretta designed another iconic style for Max Mara, the camel-hair Manuela coat. The well-known Max Mara teddy coat saw the light of day in 2013, although the inspiration harks back to an archive garment from the 1980s.
"Families don't do projects for five years, they do projects for generations." Achille Maramotti once said, and it describes the Max Mara dynasty very aptly. In addition to Max Mara, which accounts for just over half of sales, the Max Mara Fashion Group includes many other brands such as SPORTMAX, Weekend Max Mara and MARELLA. As a company, the Max Mara Group has only developed its own brands and, unlike many of its company, has never brought brands. Luigi Maramotti, son of the founder, current CEO and co-owner together with his siblings, is more interested in developing his own ideas than in pure marketing, and so he sees the company's DNA in the future of Max Mara's own brands. 'Il Gigante Silenzioso' (The Sleeping Giant) as Max Mara is also known in Italy, has been promoting women in the film industry and other global media for many years with the Max Mara Face of the Future Award. In addition to Lili Reinhart, women such as Kate Mara, Gemma Chan and Zoe Saldana have received the award both for their work in the film industry and their social commitment.