Maximilian Davis was born in Manchester to Trinidadian and Jamaican parents. His father had studied fashion design and his mother and sister worked as models; his grandmother taught him to sew on her industrial machine when he was six, and as a schoolboy he apprenticed with the tailor who made his mother's clothes. He graduated from the London College of Fashion in 2017.
He worked as a junior designer for Grace Wales Bonner and freelanced for Mowalola, Asai and Supriya Lele before launching his own label, Maximilian, in 2020. Its first collection drew on Trinidad's Carnival as part of what he called a vision of "Black elegance"; it showed with Lulu Kennedy's incubator Fashion East, was stocked by Ssense, MatchesFashion and Net-a-Porter, and was worn by Rihanna and Dua Lipa. In early 2022 he was one of twenty semifinalists for the LVMH Prize but withdrew after his appointment at Ferragamo.
Ferragamo named him creative director on 14 March 2022, the first major appointment by its new chief executive Marco Gobbetti. His debut, for spring 2023, was shown on 24 September 2022 in the courtyard of the former Milan seminary that became the Portrait Milano hotel; the house wiped its social media, dropped "Salvatore" from its name and introduced a new logo for the occasion. The collection looked back to the founder's Hollywood years, with crystal work recalling the red shoes Salvatore Ferragamo made for Marilyn Monroe in 1959. Later collections took up dance (spring 2025, prompted by a 1950 photograph of the founder fitting shoes for Katherine Dunham) and the 1920s (spring and autumn 2026).
He has dressed Michaela Coel, Zendaya and Ayo Edebiri, and a silver lamé dress from his autumn 2023 collection was worn by Beyoncé on the Renaissance World Tour. In December 2023 he won British Womenswear Designer of the Year at the Fashion Awards. Reports in early 2026 that he would leave for Alaïa were denied by the house.