MILAN — According to designer Arthur Arbesser, few other notions are as apt for Max Mara and its sister label Weekend Max Mara than timelessness.
That was the quality that the latest creative conscripted by Weekend Max Mara for a new installment of its Signature Collection, bowing at Milan Fashion Week Wednesday, wanted to highlight.
Known for his love of prints and knack for uncomplicated dresses with a theatrical but approachable flair, Arbesser, a fashion and costume designer who has toyed with furniture and design, too, was a good fit, in sync with the project’s mission to involve creatives across fields.
“The mindset of the collaboration wasn’t that institutional, I wanted this capsule to be personal and tell a story,” Arbesser said.
The Austrian designer referenced ballet and Vienna at the turn of the past century when the Secession art movement came into the cultural scene with its wind of change and the city’s Filmhaus was a cabaret venue filled with purposefully designed furniture, tableware, sets and fanzines.
The lineup revolves around fluid attire, silhouettes often deconstructed and practical to enhance movement and their breezy quality. It sticks to Weekend Max Mara’s bourgeois look with a bit of Arbesser’s rebellious, artsy-craftsy élan.
He worked a geometric floral pattern that he oil-painted on a full-skirted dress; while a fluid tank frock trimmed in contrasting red piping nods to a costume he designed in 2022. Checkered and striped patterns echo tiles and the city’s modernist architecture.
“These are timeless clothes, nothing that’s too specific for the spring 2024 season,” Arbesser said. “The collection is filled with special pieces, but very unfussy, in terms of silhouettes and textiles. They are airy and fun. It’s a mood-boosting and pretty lineup but cultured, with some depth to it,” he said.
A preview look from the Weekend Max Mara Signature Collection for spring 2024 designed by Arthur Arbesser.
Courtesy of Weekend Max Mara
The designer reworked the signature Pasticcino bag, crafted from satin and stretched horizontally, while the same double-boules closure appears on a leather patchwork crossbody style.
The collection’s name “Phantasie,” the old German word for fantasy, has several meanings for Arbesser. “I like to have fantasies and ideas and concepts in my mind and be imaginative,” he said. The moniker also references Franz Schubert’s “fantasia” compositions which “are free from the boundaries and strict rules of symphonies,” he said. In Italian it’s also the word for prints and patterns, something that is very much in Arbesser’s lexicon.
The collection was shot in Vienna inside the Academy of Fine Arts and in front of the Secession Building, which “stands for freedom of expression and speech,” the designer offered. It is sported by model and performance artist Lily McMenamy and ballet dancer Grace Lyell.
Arbesser comes in the footsteps of women he admires, who have previously collaborated on Weekend Max Mara’s Signature collections, including Lucinda Chambers and Patricia Urquiola.
Source: WWD