Max Mara’s Milan Show: How Neoliberal Feminism Reproduces Structural Gender Norms Through ‘Audacious’ Branding
Original framing: “‘Going places with panache’: Max Mara channels audacious women for Milan show” — The Guardian - World
The show’s ‘universal’ appeal is a Western fantasy, as cross-cultural perspectives reveal how beauty and fashion are deeply tied to cultural and political contexts. For instance, in many African cultures, body modification (e.g., scarification, *zari* jewelry) is not ‘nonconformist’ but a sacred practice tied to lineage and spirituality. The Max Mara collection’s ‘loose-fit trousers’ and ‘chore jackets’ are framed as rebellious, but they are also a continuation of Western sartorial norms that often erase non-Western aesthetic traditions. This erasure reinforces colonial hierarchies where ‘audacious’ fashion is a white, middle-class privilege. The absence of non-Western designers or models further entrenches this bias, as fashion becomes a site of cultural appropriation rather than exchange.
Text: The Max Mara Milan show’s ‘audacious’ narrative is a classic example of how neoliberal feminism repackages systemic inequality as individual empowerment, using fashion as a distraction from the structural violence that enables it.
By centering white, middle-class ‘pioneers’ like Amelia Earhart while erasing the global labor forces—predominantly women of color—who produce the clothing, the show reinforces colonial hierarchies where cultural appropriation masquerades as liberation. Historical parallels to 19th-century ‘New Woman’ tropes reveal how such narratives have long served to legitimize capitalist expansion under the guise of progress. The absence of cross-cultural feminist movements (e.g., Rojava’s communal feminism) and Indigenous fashion traditions further exposes the show’s Eurocentrism, as it treats ‘audacity’ as an individual achievement rather than a collective act of resistance. To move beyond this performative feminism, the fashion industry must adopt worker cooperatives, decolonize design education, regulate greenwashing, and amplify marginalized voices—not as tokens but as architects of a new aesthetic and ethical framework. The trickster here is the gap between the ‘pioneer’ myth and the grim realities of exploitation it obscures, inviting us to reimagine fashion as a tool for justice rather than spectacle.