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Nicola Mira
Published
May 11, 2023
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Weekend Max Mara taps French craftsmanship for special edition of Pasticcino handbag

Translated by
Nicola Mira
Published
May 11, 2023

The iconic Pasticcino handbag by Weekend Max Mara continues its world tour. The clutch bag was launched in 2016 and has become a best-seller for the Italian womenswear label’s casual chic-line. In 2022, Weekend Max Mara dropped the first in a series of Pasticcino special editions, linked each year to a different place whose local expertise the label is tapping to produce the handbag. After heading to Venice in 2022, to work with Fortuny fabrics and Murano glass, this spring Weekend Max Mara has opted for France. More precisely, for the north and north-east of France, having decided to collaborate with two long-established local producers to create this year’s Pasticcino. They are a lace-maker, Dentelles André Laude, and an enamel producer, Manufacture des Emaux de Longwy 1798.
 

A Pasticcino handbag made using French artisanal expertise - Weekend Max Mara


The first, founded in Caudry in 1850, is specialised in making Calais-Caudry lace, woven exclusively on its 19th century Leavers looms. For the collaboration with Weekend Max Mara, André Laude picked a guipure pattern, weaving more than 1,700 metres of lace that was used to coat the Pasticcino clutch, which is shaped like an old granny purse. Manufacture des Emaux de Longwy, founded in 1798, made instead the clasp’s bead fasteners, hand-crafting 10,000 enamelled ceramic beads.
 
The handbags are then assembled using these fine components and other materials at Max Mara’s leather goods factory in Tuscany. The Pasticcino France special edition is available in five colours: pink, lavender, lemon, pumpkin orange and black. Max Mara’s design studio was inspired by both the typical palette of macaroons and by Marie-Antoinette’s wardrobe. This special version is priced at €600, as opposed to about €350 for a standard version, and is commercialised in all Weekend Max Mara stores, as well as the Max Mara stores selling the Weekend line. Notably in Paris, where the Max Mara boutique on rue Saint-Honoré is showcasing the handbag in an ad hoc space.

Since the original launch, the Pasticcino handbag has been created in a host of variants - including in denim - colours and prints, as part of the Weekend Max Mara collections. “Pasticcino is the Italian word for a small pastry covered with fruit or cream, which Italians traditionally enjoy at the end of their Sunday lunch. The bag’s shape is reminiscent of their softness, and its name of those sweet, rather nostalgic moments of a typical Sunday from back in the day” said Nicola Gerber Maramotti, ambassador of the ‘tribute to France’ edition of the Weekend Max Mara Pasticcino handbag.
 
Gerber Maramotti is the wife of Ignazio Maramotti, president of the Max Mara group and one of the three children of Achille Maramotti, the group’s founder. She oversees the Max Mara label's direct retail distribution, comprising both the e-shop and physical stores.
 
“Max Mara is doing very well. The label has surpassed its 2019 pre-pandemic sales levels, and is experiencing robust double-digit growth thanks to a fantastic local customer base and a strong turnaround in tourist purchases,” Gerber Maramotti told FashionNetwork.com. “The Weekend line in particular is growing at an increasingly fast pace, and is becoming more independent, with more and more dedicated stores. We have recently opened new stores in Rome, Stockholm, Vienna and London,” she added.

In 2021, the Max Mara Fashion group recorded a revenue of €1.527 billion, of which 50% generated outside Italy. The group employs 5,200 people and is distributed in 2,500 stores in 105 countries, with its labels Max Mara, Weekend Max Mara, Sportmax, Pennyblack, Max&Co, Marella, iBlues, Marina Rinaldi and Persona by Marina Rinaldi.
 

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