Miu Miu Fall 2021 Fashion Show Review

Review of Miu Miu Fall 2021 Fashion Show

“Daring Clothes, But Possible”

Poetry in Pastels Deep in the Alps

By Long Nguyen

“I love mountains. This season there is a lot of snow. If we didn’t do it in the snow this time, we would never have another occasion to do it in Cortina d’Ampezzo,” Miuccia Prada said of the reason for the shooting of the Miu Miu fall collection in the Italian Dolomites Alps.

The Scottish cinematographer Benjamin Kracun created a majestic film that framed this powerful collection that braced the confines of fashion and nature with clothes made for the extreme.’ Cortina d’Ampezzo is the site of the 1956 Winter Olympics and will host the winter games in 2026 again.

“Brave is what I had in mind mostly,” Prada said at the post-show zoom. She mentioned becoming a football fan and about the lightness of nature and of sports – both contributing factors in this poetic snow excursion. “But in the mountains, I want to maintain my ideas of fashion.”

Against the white snow and the mountainside’s vastness, Prada did not disappoint in crafting the kind of clothes that both adapt and tame the environment.

The clothes vary in the mixes of pastel colors, materials puffer downs and cashmere dresses, and forms in quilted bodysuits and big hiking boots. Prada promises as to the kind of clothes for women bracing new adventures in these all conditions gears.

The collection erased the street, sports, and high fashion lines in such seamless ways that do not require collaboration.

Every luxury fashion house clamored to raise their street credibility lately. Oversized argyle cardigan coat and silky camel slip dress with brown wool knit leggings, brown furry muffs, a yellow knit scarf, blue stripe hat, and lace-up hiking boots merged into a single look. There is even a black puffer ‘onesie’ jumpsuit, a garment that formed the underpinning of the recent men and women fall collections.

Here, an ice blue with white faux fur lining, a matching quilted pant, a camel cashmere knit camisole, a light mauve knot jumpsuit, or a hefty red wool sweater dress worn with those brown knee-high faux fur boots furnished the required fashion quotient for these slopes. “I remember when I was young when it was hot, you take away the jacket, and you take away the sweater, and to go skiing in your bikini. It may look strange but in the end is not,” Prada said of the combination of the light pink knit bra over a light cashmere tank underneath the light purple padded down jacket and loose pants.

It isn’t just about the bikini bras pairing with the heavy anoraks, but about how the softness of the cashmere, velvet, or wool slip or short sleeve dresses represent this romantic idea of braving the elements. Nature is something that is healing. The confrontation with nature, with extreme nature – it is challenging yourself. It isn’t easy. Brave as a romantic idea – romantic meaning doing something important, doing something exaggerated, and something difficult.

These clothes are not romantic, but the feeling is romantic. “Daring clothes, but possible,” Prada said.

The idea of underwear items in heavy wool, even in the rough mountain, maintains a person’s identity and perhaps sexiness against the elements. “You used clothes to express how you feel. The clothes should be at the service of a woman’s character.”

It’s great to see Miu Miu moving slightly away from the high gloss glamor that has always been intrinsic to the brand. Here, the glamor is still there but filtered through a different lens, and in this way, it looks at the world differently, at least with the clothes. The strappy short dresses with embellishments are still there when the sun goes down, but now it’s furry après-ski boots rather than, say, a python print Ayers leather platform pumps.

Prada spoke post-show about the difficulties of the shooting in the mountain. She specifically mentioned the relationship shown throughout the film between the vast mountains’ shots and the extreme close up focusing on framing the entirety to the model’s faces. “How to relate to the person and to the grandness. We discussed a lot on how to film the girls – the bigness and the concentration on the face of the person.” There was off course, no talk about lockdown clothes or any necessity for them. The Prada brand is about future adventure, even tough ones like this particular trek to the mountain to make this show film.

“Fashion is always about actuality,” Prada said.

The actuality is about seeing things bigger than fashion yet somehow are intrinsic to fashion. Much of the discussions of sustainability in recent years pushing the efforts to rein in waste in the fashion industry have missed one specific and essential thing: the environment and nature’s utter beauty. The sense of the fragility of the beauty of humans and nature is apparent in the film.

By staging a film of this show in the pristine Italian Alps virtually untouched by industrial encroachments, this Miu Miu film contributes in a far more excellent way to raise the consciousness about the absolute value of nature and the environment. These mountains’ exhilarating and straightforward beauty of these places in nature is often seen in fashion but not felt for their preciousness. The film ends with a ritual where the young women lit a small fire and gathered around in silent celebration.

“For sure you have to think of the clothes, but the film is a lot of things. For movie directors, they work on the story. People from fashion don’t know how to make a movie. So we have to improvise. The movie has to tell a story that is related to fashion. I am a fashion designer and not a movie director,” Prada said when asked about digital presentations’ challenges versus the live shows.

A year has passed, and fashion brands have experimented with showcasing a new season most creatively. That said, it would be difficult to see this Miu Miu collection out of its mountain context simply because these clothes are more potent in this film presentation than, say, on an actual runway show, even if the staging is covered with faux snow.