On May 20th, the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrated a milestone moment: ten years in its Meatpacking District home, and ten years of one of fashion’s most quietly iconic accessories — the Max Mara Whitney Bag.
The annual gala returned to the museum’s Renzo Piano-designed building in New York with an evening honouring artist Amy Sherald, curator Barbara Haskell, and board chair Richard DeMartini. But this year’s festivities reach beyond the art world, thanks to Max Mara’s renewed partnership with the museum and a global celebration of the Whitney Bag’s 10th anniversary.
Originally created in 2015 to mark the opening of the new Whitney building, the bag was born from an unexpected collaboration between Max Mara and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The outcome is a structured, ribbed leather handbag inspired by the modular facade of the museum — making it part architecture, part design object, and all Italian craftsmanship.
“It’s a one-of-a-kind creation,” says Maria Giulia Prezioso Maramotti, Max Mara board member, describing the bag as a way to reinforce the brand’s values through form and function. What began as a limited edition piece quickly became a staple for women drawn to its sculptural elegance and understated power.
“Research, design and innovation are the common values that link the Whitney Bag to the brand’s DNA. Architectural elements, expressed in rigorous lines and distinctive details, are as much a feature of the coats as they are of the Whitney Bag,” she adds.
A decade on, Max Mara is marking the anniversary with a new limited edition: a reissue of the original aluminium-hued model, complete with a red nappa leather lining and the distinctive ‘Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop’ fire-stamped signature. Only 125 of these will be released globally. Thirteen new colourways and additional sizes expand the collection, which now includes a sleek five-ribbed variation alongside the classic design.
Elisabetta Trezzani, Partner at RPBW, remembers the original collaboration as “joyful and fun,” a creative exchange grounded in precision and mutual respect. “When I see a Whitney Bag being worn, I always smile and think of this wonderful shared experience,” she says.
The anniversary celebrations began in April during Salone del Mobile in Milan, with Max Mara’s Corso Vittorio Emanuele flagship transformed into a surrealist window display starring the Whitney Bag in oversized and miniature forms. Stores in Rome, Paris, London, Shanghai, and New York followed suit this May, leading up to the grand finale: the Whitney Gala itself.
This year’s gala not only toasts ten years of the museum downtown but also a bag that’s quietly earned its place in fashion history: for instance, it’s held in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology.
Find out more about the Whitney Bag here.
photography. Max Mara
words. Gennaro Costanzo
