On a hot summer's day in the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia, elderly men cycle along cobble-stoned streets while young mothers with children in tow browse the open air markets. Founded in the second century BC as a Roman colony, the charming commune east of Milan remains a repository of Italian traditions and icons, from Parmigiano-Reggiano and Parma ham to Max Mara, the luxury brand founded by Achille Maramotti in 1951.

The fashion label has spread its wings since, spanning a global empire that comprises 2668 stores in more than 100 countries. Annual turnover was €1.38 billion in 2015 for the Max Mara Fashion Group, which today comprises nine brands – Max Mara, Sportmax, Weekend by Max Mara, Pennyblack, Max&Co;, Marella, iBlues, Marina Rinaldi and Persona by Marina Rinaldi.

The Maramotti family still has a significant stake in Reggio Emilia. It is a major shareholder in the local bank, Credito Emiliano, and owns the luxury boutique hotel Albergo delle Notarie (where I am staying) and the Michelin guide restaurant Caffè Arti e Mestieri (where I have dinner). It also operates the contemporary art museum, Collezione Maramotti (Achille was a passionate collector before he died in 2005, aged 78), and, this being Italy, the family owns local cheese maker Due Madonne.

Given the scale of the Maramotti empire, when I visit Max Mara's slick 30-hectare headquarters just outside Reggio Emilia, it's endearing to hear creative director Ian Griffiths confide he had feared that he wouldn't be able to create enough clothes to fill the warehouse when the group moved there in 2003 from smaller premises in the city.

""My first thought was, wow, we have to sell enough clothes to fill that enormous building," Griffiths recalls.

We are sitting on a black leather couch in his expansive second-floor office, where classical music plays softly in the background and a pin-board is adorned with a Who's Who of inspiration, ranging from Lauren Bacall and Patti Smith to David Bowie and former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld. The room is filled with sketches, fabric swatches and includes a new version of the classic camel coat on which Achille built his reputation for understated elegance and a whole empire based on a vision for a new method of production to cater to the emerging middle classes.

The visionary

"He was an extremely forward-thinking man who identified that the middle class would be the most powerful force in society and that clothing would develop in the post-war period as an industrial phenomenon as opposed to something produced in a couture atelier," Griffiths says.

To that end, Achille toured the world's first apparel factories in America and Switzerland, before returning to Reggio Emilia to produce his own clothes for women with aspirations.

"His idea was very much about creating high-quality clothing for the wife of the local doctor or the local solicitor," Griffiths says. "Like those people, Achille was hard-working and dedicated to being successful, but he was not about glitter and glory."

Maramotti chose to specialise in the production of coats, stylistically inspired by French haute couture but manufactured with innovative industrial tailoring techniques in Italy. As the years passed and "the wives of the doctors and solicitors became the doctors and solicitors", Max Mara's refined and luxurious style evolved into a full wardrobe for working women that reached its height during the power dressing era of the '80s.

The brand's price tags hit a new high, too.

"What we do is a luxurious version of feminism because we dress women to be successful in whatever they do," Griffiths says.

"The little story we tell ourselves is that they are high-quality items but they are within reach if you work hard enough. This was very much in the mind of Achille when he founded the company; he wanted it to be not for princesses and countesses but for the middle classes who were driven to succeed."

Walk into any international hotel lobby or smart restaurant today, and chances are several women will be wearing Max Mara – not that they'll be flaunting it.

"The Max Mara woman wants to be noticed but for all the right reasons," Griffiths says . "Her intelligence and personality show through more than the clothes she's wearing, and she gravitates to an understated, pulled-together chic."

Sacred object

Max Mara began by making coats. "For us the coat is almost a sacred object," Griffiths says. "If you put on a Max Mara coat you feel as glamorous as a film star."

Indeed, the most coveted Max Mara stealth-wealth item is the brand's iconic camel coat, which has been worn by some of the world's most stylish women including Cate Blanchett, Isabella Rossellini and Sofia Coppola.

The coats come in several classic styles including the Manuela, a wrap coat without buttons that is belted at the waist, the Rialto, which is shorter with a narrow sleeve and a hood, and the 101801 coat, which has a voluminous silhouette and oversize kimono sleeves. The latest iteration in the outerwear arsenal is the sample in Griffiths' office, which has the sharp peaked collar and set-in sleeve of a men's coat but is tied with a belt to give it femininity.

"Hopefully it will become a new icon; maybe not next season but in years to come," he says.

Classics past and future are made in a high-tech factory on the Max Mara campus, which evokes an airport in terms of its size and the number of staff and garments it produces. More than 100,000 items are made by 220 employees each year in the 10,000-square-metre space.

On the day I visit, Max Mara is making its autumn/winter 2017 collection.

Workers in white lab coats go about their business with a quiet focus at myriad stations: there are 80-220 steps required for the production of every coat and while 80 per cent are now completed using technology, 20 per cent of operations are still done by hand using the traditional needle, thread and scissors. Each garment is subject to five separate quality control checks before it is allowed to leave the factory and receives an "identity card" with its size, style number, colour, batch number and store delivery week.

Quality control

"We can track every single garment we produce and nothing is allowed to leave the factory unless it is perfect," says one employee.

I ponder the combination of technology and craftsmanship over lunch in the Max Mara canteen, where hundreds of workers flock daily for a free meal of fresh pasta or fish, steak and salads. The family-style operation is part of the Italian DNA of the company that Griffiths enjoys so much.

"I almost feel more at home here than in my actual home in London," he says. "Being a family-owned company, we have very close relationships and can have quite heated discussions at times without doing any real damage."

When it comes to discussions about balancing the heritage of the company with its future path, Griffiths is emphatic.

"It would be very easy with all this history for Max Mara to become a kind of museum to the past – that's precisely what I don't want it to be," he says.

"Of course I respect the brand's traditions, but I'm never frightened to push the boundaries to be a little experimental and to say something new."

Cultural custodian

Laura Lusardi is the cultural custodian of Max Mara. The company's stylish silver-haired fashion director has been with the business for 53 years, having joined it as a 16-year-old shopgirl/stylist in 1964.

Lusardi has worked on all nine brands in the group and is responsible today for the archive of more than 350,000 items that she has meticulously accumulated and catalogued over the years. From ensembles worn by Audrey Hepburn to a sizeable chunk of Carine Roitfeld's wardrobe, the collection also includes patterns, fabric swatches and fashion magazines dating back to the 1920s.

It is used for inspiration as well as preservation.

"The archive is the memory and soul of the company but it is also a resource for today's designers," says Lusardi. "It is living history because it allows designers to feel the garments and the fabrics with their own hands, rather than look up something on a computer."

Lusardi's design influence with the company is far from history: she still works directly with Griffiths each season on every new collection.

"Ian is in charge because he is the creative director, but we have a true exchange of ideas and discussion because I am the only one at Max Mara who has personally worked on and designed every collection."