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There is always a quiet, understated dialogue between Prada and Miu Miu, but this season that conversation felt louder than ever before. At Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons showed a collection that appeared incredibly simple, yet was bulging with hidden detail and profound meaning. The same can be said for Miu Miu Spring Summer 2023, a collection that appeared strictly minimalist, but had vast hidden depths just beneath the surface. After a stellar year in which she created the defining look of 2022, Mrs. Prada is getting philosophical with fashion, taking her collections back to basics (literally), and building them again from the ground up.
“This is not an easy moment to create fashion,” she said after the show. “For this collection, I wanted to explore the purpose of fashion, its reason. Its usefulness in society and in culture today. Fashion can have a meaning and a reason beyond utility—to decorate, to attract, is a meaning. But it is important that fashion functions—I am not anti-luxury but I am anti-ostentation.” That meant a muted colour palette of greys, beiges, whites, and camels, and deceptively simple silhouettes like long sleeve stretch-jersey shirts, tailored blazers, and knee-length skirts.
These piece were all, of course, given the Miu Miu treatment: blazers were smartly updated with exposed, frayed lining at the hem and cuffs, midi skirts were sheer, low-slung, and delicately embellished, ‘basics’ like shirts of varying length were layered tightly over each other, as were pairs of ‘Miu Miu’-logoed knickers. Recognisable shapes from past seasons, like the mini skirts, were reworked in leather and washed denim.
Nothing was by chance. Especially not the casting which included Ewan McGregor’s actress daughter Esther, Björk’s musician daughter Ísadóra Barney, as well as artist Miranda July, singer Sibyl Buck, and musician FKA Twigs. “Always I want to expand Miu Miu, to open up, through our casting, through collaboration with artists,” Miuccia Prada said, a sentiment that extended to her commissioning the artist Shuang Li to create visual and audio artwork to showcase at the runway presentation.
Mrs. Prada is undeniably on a winning streak, and our wardrobes are all the luckier for it.
