Deciphering Life’s Dress Codes Through Memory at Miu Miu
Review of Miu Miu Fall 2024 Fashion Show
By Angela Baidoo
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
THE THEME
As the official arbitrator of settling the final fashion direction for the season – or seasons to come – Miuccia Prada’s little sister brand Miu Miu today took its own swipe at the mundanity of life.
With the constant cleaving onto the softness of childhood, for those struggling to cope with life as we know it, Prada takes us on a concise trip down memory lane, journeying as she did with the evolving of clothes from girl to woman. From the moment we are clothed as children, they have held meaning, and as today’s show title ‘Individual Moments’ suggests they can also retain special memories of a time, place, or an experience that was had while wearing a favourite sweater. A school uniform instilled a sense of conformity, the first grown-up item bought with a first pay-check, a go-to date night LBD which never failed to exude confidence in the wearer. Clothes are the keepsakes of a person’s character throughout their lives, and for fall 2024 there was an evocation of key markers across “the development of character, both personal and universal” in fashion form, according to today’s show notes.
Silhouettes were shrunken as if a child’s leather bomber jacket had been tried on for size by its mother, and like-wise the chic fur and suede coats and printed shift dresses were reminiscent of a child playing dress-up in her mother’s closet. Girlishness was released from its negative connation’s and reframed within the notes as “a universal idiom expressive of strength of rebellion [and] a spirit of freedom and individuality”. To drive the point home by embodying the Miu Miu persona, Kristin Scott Thomas, Little Simz, and Guillaume Diop walked the runway in school uniform-style knits and crisp cotton skirts, a classic ladylike cocoon coat, and cornflower blue pyjamas coded in childhood. The idea of adulthood was expressed in contrast by hyper-feminine little black dresses with suggestive cut-outs and chic satin dresses which displayed a natural rebellion through an imperfect crinkle and rumple of the fabric.
Miu Miu mixed right with wrong in order to show us how we can look back at gendered cultural signfiers and reshape them to “project forwards”.
THE BUZZWORDS
shrunken silhouettes, memories in the medium, day-glo brights, fabric merging
THE SHOWSTOPPER
Look #10
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, the cardigan – a staple part of school uniforms – is transformed in shrunken mini dress proportions for adult life.
THE DIRECTION
THE QUOTE
You can choose different moments of your life and decide how you want to mix them up. Even for myself I have to decide whether I want to be a 15-year-old girl or a lady each morning”
– Miuccia Prada, creative director, Miu Miu
THE WRAP UP
What memory do clothes hold? And how can these memories exist beyond our own existence when we are not around to share the memory trapped within each individual item of clothing? These are all the existential questions which were raised in today’s show in what appeared as another covetable Miu Miu collection of divergent ideas and expressions, which was modelled on women of all ages to represent the connectedness of clothing, developed as a vocabulary to share our individuality throughout every life stage.
