Patricia Urquiola designs fashion for Weekend Max Mara

During the presentation of the new collections, Weekend Max Mara decided to entrust the design of a new capsule collection to Spanish, but Milan-based, architect and designer Patricia Urquiola. The colourful collection, designed to reflect the needs and contradictions of everyday life, is defined by the creator herself as an “emotional habitat”.

The collection is part of Weekend Max Mara’s Signature line, an ongoing project in which several international creatives are involved each season to create a collection that blends their approach with the brand’s heritage. Previous collaborators include model Alek Wek, costume designer Gabriella Pescucci, interior designer Anthony Baratta and artists Richard Saja and Donald Robertson. Urquiola is the tenth participant.

Already working as a product in architecture and art direction, Urquiola had already presented her first collaboration with the brand last February, choosing to show it to the public at the headquarters of carpet manufacturer CC-Tapis, a brand with which she has been collaborating for some time. Despite having close ties to the fashion industry throughout her career, this is actually the first clothing collection she has created.

The capsule is entitled Habito, a Spanish word meaning both “habit” and “inhabit”. The design began in the Max Mara archive, a place Urquiola was eager to explore at the start of the project. The collection thus comprises a series of coats in variously amplified proportions, combining playfully juxtaposed fabrics. Other elements include a brightly coloured waistcoat, reminiscent of the colourful CC-Tapis carpets that served as the backdrop for the presentation, giant clutch bags with snap fasteners and shirts with wide pleated sleeves. The result, then, is a set of micro-architectures to be inhabited that takes shape and meaning in a fusion of characters where, guiding the free contamination, is a precise series of combinations and contrasting plays between colours, textures and even parts of the garments.