Connecting CreativityIf we consider the product as being at the core of a manufacturing
company’s culture, and all the related activities of development, production,
marketing and promotion arranged around it, we can appreciate how the
company’s internal activities, through reciprocal flows, engender a distinctive
texture in the image of the product itself. Connecting creativity means, to
me, positive interaction between different functions. The designer’s creativity
must be linked to a project; the company itself cannot exist without one. A
well-delineated project multiplies the opportunities for the application of
creative ideas, just as the artists and craftspeople who symbolized creativity
in the past worked freely, yet to precise briefs. At the same time, we must
recognize that creativity cannot be strictly planned, and especially in such a
complex organization as ours, we must be flexible and ready to modify, at
least partially, our project. A simple but frequent example of that need for
flexibility is evident in the process of selecting materials. We may happen, in
the course of our work, to discover fabrics and colours we find interesting,
and wish to include them in a project, where they had not been foreseen.
This might appear straightforward but the introduction of something new
in to a collection can have enormous implications for supply, production,
workability and quality control. Even the smallest of variations can cause a
chain reaction, which must be assimilated. The potential dangers of creativity
are undoubtedly a factor in industry’s ambivalence towards it, yet to cut it
out of the company culture is to risk stagnation and decline.
How, then, does MaxMara handle creativity? Our firm has a singular
history. It was founded by my father, Achille Maramotti, more than fifty
years ago and its roofs are to be found in the tradition linking my family to
dressmaking on one side and to education on the other. My great-great-
grandmother was the head of a well-known local couturier in the middle of
the last century, whilst my grandmother was a true pedagogue. Experimental
by nature, she not only taught the techniques of design, pattern cutting and
sewing, she also invented new methods, offering at the same time moral and
practical guidance to the girls attending the ‘Scuole Maramotti’ which she
established in the 1930s.
There is no doubt that this history has greatly spurred love of experimenta-
tion and innovation at every level in our company. But as I have argued,
creativity is of little purpose unchecked or unsupported. We have over the
years established a sequence of critical mechanisms by which creative energy
is directed to the most effective ends. These are outlined in the paragraphs
that follow.