The volume COATS! Max Mara. 55 anni di moda italiana tells the story of the company from Reggio Emilia for the first time, thanks to hitherto unseen material from the company’s extensive archives.

Max Mara, founded in 1951 by Achille Maramotti and managed today by his children Luigi, Ignazio and Maria Ludovica, is one of the world’s most important fashion houses. Thanks to a realistic and well-rounded sense of fashion, over the years Max Mara has managed to maintain the principles and priorities which have distinguished it throughout the world: high quality, attention to fashion, first class tailoring even in mass production, study, research and, last but not least, leadership in distribution and communication.

COATS! Max Mara, 55 anni di moda italiana is a journey through the history of fashion. The coat, the symbol of this Maison, and the item that has made it famous the world over, is the key to this reading.

The book contains essays on the history of the company and on design written by renowned fashion historians such as Enrica Morini and Colin McDowell, critical analyses of photographic campaigns and the numerous artistic interpretations of cammello 101801, the icon of Max Mara, by authors such as William Wegman or Miwa Yanagi.

Numerous hitherto unpublished illustrations including the sketches of stylists such as Karl Lagerfeld, Jean Charles de Castelbajac, Luciano Soprani, Guy Paulin, Anne-Marie Beretta, fashion photographs by Sarah Moon, Manfredi Bellati, Peter Lindbergh, Richard Avedon, Steven Meisel, Craig McDean and many others, giving a broader view of Italian fashion over recent decades as well as an idea of where the future will lead.

This volume has been published for the first retrospective of this Italian company, COATS! Max Mara, 55 anni di moda italiana, exhibiting over 80 original models taken from the company archives and numerous images. The exhibition will open in November 2006, at the Kulturforum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Cultural Forum of the State Museums of Berlin). After this first stage in Germany, the exhibition will be on show in other prestigious cultural institutions all over the world.

Art and fashion historian Adelheid Rasche is both editor of the volume and curator of the exhibition, since 1990 she has been the curator of the Lipperheideschen Kostümbibliothek, Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek, Art Library of the State Museums of Berlin). She has curated numerous exhibitions and edited important publications on fashion and international culture.