Entitled Mimesis, Maxime’s graduate collection explores the vulnerability of domestic life. Inspired by Situationist thought, the designer searches for meaning in an increasingly digital landscape. Family friend Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels spored the mycelium of Mimesis. Confronting the meaninglessness of postmodern life, the three-hour classic stages a woman cooking, cleaning and peeling. The audience is confronted with the horror of existence: to be suspended in life is at once a pleasure and a plight. Maxime’s Westminster studies were plunged into an intense inertia by the Covid-19 lockdown. His year group at Westminster “never really got the chance to fully develop all these skills that over years we would have.” This meant “it was sort of all crammed into our final year, which made it so exciting.” Once out of lockdown, design internships at Feben and Harris Reed, to name a few, enriched Max’s skill set while he crafted his final collection. After the boredom of confinement, Mimesis flourished in humble extravagance. “There’s such beauty in modesty,” explains Maxime as he depicts his muses. Every illustration is a fragment of friends or film characters, with “shoulders … probably all scrunched up because they’re shy.” Humble tailoring winks amidst the froth of grandeur, “telling a story in the composition of a garment.”