Max Mara Sells Restraint in Milan, and the Guardian Notices the Absence of Shock

The Guardian's fashion desk filed from Milan fashion week on Thursday on Max Mara, describing a catwalk of well-cut coats, sturdy block-heeled boots, crisp white shirts and capacious suede handbags. The paper's verdict was as much about what the show withheld: what it quite deliberately did not have, the Guardian wrote, was shock value.

The collection, in the paper's reading, nods to the 'nonconformist glamour' of Amelia Earhart and other pioneers, with chore jackets and loose-fit trousers carrying the reference. The Guardian quotes the house's own framing of the intent, including the line that it hopes the clothes go places with panache. The dispatch treats the absence of provocation as an editorial position rather than an omission.

Milan fashion week has given the international style press a consistent theme this season: houses arguing about what women actually wear. The Guardian reported earlier in the week that Prada gave skirts star billing, with Miuccia Prada and the Belgian designer Raf Simons again combining, and separately that Maria Grazia Chiuri's Fendi collection put the Italian pop legend Raffaella Carrà at its centre, in a show the paper described as full of diaphanous dresses and visible bras.