While many British designers are referencing Marie Antoinette, renewed interest in the French queen fanned by the big V&A exhibition now on in London, Ian Griffiths selected another 18th-century court figure, Madame de Pompadour, a renowned patron and proponent of Rococo style, as an influence for his latest Max Mara collection.

“We’re not creating a BBC costume drama,” Griffiths stressed right off the bat. “We’re creating modern fashion for modern women and for every look that bears a trace of Rococo, there’s a look that’s completely the opposite.”

The show opened with a sleeveless trench dress with puffs of frou-frou at the shoulders, followed by a sleek pantsuit, cueing up Griffiths interplay between the 1780s and the 1980s.

When organza petals or frilled fabric garlands accumulated on hips or shoulders, it was sometimes hard to tell if the designer was referencing Rococo or David Bowie’s Pierrot costume for his “Scary Monsters” album art, which figured on the mood board backstage alongside portraits of Madame de Pompadour.

“The collection celebrates her as if she were a contemporary woman,” Griffiths stressed. “Complete modernity and chic are our aims in this collection.”

It is doubtful that Madame de Pompadour did enough crunches or Pilates classes to wear the cropped knits and jackets that dominated this collection, which exalted the taut abs of the models.

This was a skimpy and lowkey sexy collection, with plenty of bare shoulders, bare backs, bare legs, and harness-like black elastics bifurcating waists or hoisting halter-neck tailoring.

There were surprisingly few coats, the backbone of this Italian brand, though the cropped trenches are bound to be popular, as well as all the slim suiting.

Given all the beige and camel, and with only a few ghostly floral and undersea prints to break the monotony, it’s clear where this collection landed in the maximalism-versus-minimalism divide playing out on Milan runways.

But back to Griffith’s mood board, which also included a black-and-white photo of himself wearing an glossy, big-shouldered getup that could slot into another current London exhibition: “Blitz: The Club That Shaped the 80s.” 

“It’s the first outfit I ever made for myself to go clubbing in,” Griffiths said. “I used lining material and ran it up on my mother’s sewing machine.”

Lo and behold there were two fabric petals at the shoulder – a touch of frou-frou that would make Madame Pompidou, or Bowie, proud.