Vogue Italia Fuses Style and Performance for Elegant Maserati Campaign

In their original Italian, the colours of Maserati’s new MC20 already set the scene. Bianco Audace, a bold, courageous white; Blu Infinito, a blue with horizontal depths; Nero Enigma, enigmatic black; Grigio Mistero, a mysterious, chiaroscuro grey; Giallo Genio, genius yellow; and finally, Rosso Vincente, a victorious red. The storytelling starts with these colours, but permeates the whole car, representing a new path for the storied marque of Maserati, embracing deference to its past while accelerating towards the future with a powerful combination of style and performance. 

Developed in the Maserati Innovation Lab, the car is entirely made in Italy. Manufactured in the historic factory in Viale Ciro Menotti, Modena – a vast craftsman’s workshop with  the look of a high-tech engineering laboratory – this is a land of metal, hands and machines all working together. The making of the car is itself a finely choreographed ritual,  which provided the inspiration for the collaboration between Maserati and Vogue Italia. The film stars a collective of dancers as explorers in this atelier of know-how, echoing the  movements of the car with their bodies: the opening of its doors, the various phases of construction. Above all, it tells the story of how these elements are joined together through metamorphosis, becoming a functioning ensemble, a singular whole. 

A bright future  

As with the nuances of the MC20, the beauty of the performance lies in its exploration of the invisible within the visible. It is an exercise in dynamism paying tribute to the sector of performance, which is getting back into gear after the forced standstill of the pandemic. It also pays homage to its most motivated and vulnerable figures: young talents. It brings together those seemingly distant from one another – engineers and dancers, designers  and choreographers, all creators of pleasure for an audience, whether they sit behind the wheel or in a theatre. While the new Maserati was presented exactly a year ago, the car’s  aerodynamics are the result of thousands of hours of experimentation in the wind tunnel, balancing the relationship between weight and power with an obsessive care. The carbon-fibre body is the same for all three versions: coupé, convertible or electric, proving  that a more sustainable future has already arrived. But, of course, the heart – the very crux of the car – is the engine, one that borrows technology from Formula 1 and brings it to the road. The resulting 630 horsepower V6 is a patented masterpiece, named Nettuno after Neptune, the bearer of Maserati’s legendary trident. 

An artful masterpiece 

The direction of the video was entrusted to Alice Fassi, who shot entirely on film to lend a patina of analogue charm to the project. Macia Del Prete – a choreographer of international standing who boasts numerous high-profile collaborations in the world of fashion – worked with her dance collective, Collettivo Trasversale. “The idea,” explains Del Prete, “was to make the bodies resemble a system of mechanical elements. Smooth out the differences until they are almost eliminated and overlay them with each other through visual allusions that are never explained.” 

The clothes worn by the protagonists were designed by former dancer Alessandro Vigilante, who chose Latex as the principal material. He looked at the costumes as “almost a  chassis”, he explains, “with neutral colours giving them an almost aseptic sense.” Vigilante’s creations are characterised by windows and openings, built from strips of fabric with  an eye towards the construction processes of the supercar. He also looked at the “transparency of windows that open onto the interior, with their voids, edges and curves”. The  resulting looks are hybrids of those contradictions – harmony and restlessness, platitude and turmoil, both beauty and the beast – attributes that are shared with the MC20, a car that symbolises a certain savage grace. A grace achieved through design by subtraction, with form at the service of engineering, with lines that almost float on the frame. 

The video, a unique result of united yet seemingly disparate elements, has been a creative conversation to symbolise the story of Maserati’s MC20 itself: gathering inspiration and expertise together from far and wide, uniting them in thoroughly Italian fashion, poised to face straight into the future.