Women who want their clothing to be durable but with outstanding fashion content head straight to Max Mara, and their loyalty over the years proves the recipe is a perfectly balanced one, indeed.

Max Mara was created in 1951 in the wealthy Italian town of Reggio Emilia. Founder Achille Maramotti had just finished law studies at University but skipped a career as lawyer to focus on fashion: his grandmother was a seamstress, after all.

View Max Mara's photos from the show

Maramotti had a revolutionary idea back then: he conceived a concise collection of coats and suits to be sold as ready-made garments in shops. It was something totally unheard of at the time, as women were accustomed to buying fabrics (fashion shops were basically fabric shops in Italy), then relying on private seamstresses to make the clothes.

Fifty one years after that winning idea, Max Mara has grown into a family-driven global company where quality is still the keyword – and not just on press releases. Today, the helm is firmly in the hands of Maramotti’s sons, the eldest one, Luigi, being the president.

Max Mara has built most of its fashion strength on neat classics, the true pillars of the female wardrobe: the coat, the impeccable jacket, the faultless pantsuit. In particular, a camel hair double-breasted coat, the 101801, is a small masterpiece of design. Launched in the mid-70s, this coat is so iconic – down to the handmade stitches running on lapels and cuffs – that it ended up at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Barely changed, it is still a bestseller today. And, last year to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary, Max Mara commissioned a group of artists to do a no-holds-barred makeover, giving the mythical coat new life as a pure work of art.

The stitching that makes the 101801 so unique is a good example of the way traditional tailoring marries state-of-the-art technology in the impressively slick Max Mara factories. Those stitches look handmade, but they are done with an adapted sewing machine with the aid of a computer.

Accordingly, all Max Mara production processes are a blend of old and new under strict quality control. Two out of ten finished garments undergo a careful inspection in the Reggio Emilia factories so that what ends up in the shop is faultless.

Max Mara has had, and still has some of the best designers of the 20th century working behind the scenes, anonymously, on the collections: this explains the strong design edge the garments never lack. Again, it was founder Achille Maramotti who understood early on the importance of young creative energy for the brand. He deliberately chose to keep them anonymous in order to avoid being popular for one specific designer, and to be able to move into new territory as times changed. The roll call of designers saw Karl Lagerfeld and Emmanuelle Kahn in the 60s, and then, in order, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Guy Paulin, Anne-Marie Beretta, Franco Moschino, Dolce & Gabbana, Narciso Rodriguez.

Over the years, the initial collection has slowly but steadily morphed into a series of ancillary lines targeted to different customers. The youth-quake 60s saw the birth of Sportmax, the first total look collection the company produced, while in the stiff 80s, Pianoforte, a line of evening and cocktail dresses, was launched. Today the span of the 29 or so lines ranges from trendy to plus-sized, and accessories, shoes and eyewear have been added to the whole.

To enforce the brand’s message, Max Mara introduced in the late 80s its own magazine, MM, a cross between catalogue and lifestyle publication, where real but famous women, instead of models, wear the clothes. The choice of photographers has been careful since the very beginning in order to give an image of Max Mara women in synch with changing times.

For winter 2002, Max Mara opts for a strong series of shapely coats, some lined in mink or with kimono closures plus the occasional mink stole, in a warm palette of earthy tones. Sportmax is edgier, as usual, verging on the Lord of the Rings barbarian look with lots of hairy fur vests and wraps over billowing mini-dresses and floppy, high-heeled suede boots.