Max Mara’s British designer brings a bit of beatnik to Milan

Ian Griffiths says he spent much of the pandemic at home in Suffolk reading existential novels

The critic who in 1959 called the writer Françoise Sagan a “luxury hotel existentialist” didn’t mean it as a compliment. But for Ian Griffiths, the British designer of Max Mara, the phrase is a way of making sense of returning to the pomp and finery of the Milan catwalks after spending much of the pandemic reading existentialist novels at home in Suffolk.

“Did you know that sales of Camus doubled last year?” asked Griffiths backstage, as photographers hustled past in search of the supermodels Gigi Hadid and Irina Shayk, who starred in the show.