A vocabulary of clothing, from childhood to adulthood. The Miu Miu Fall/Winter 2024 collection by Miuccia Prada draws inspiration from the span and scope of people’s lives, its shifting clothing types reflective of the development of character, both personal and universal.
Concurrent gestures express different moments in life - they coexist within singleoutfits, just as we each hold simultaneous memories of our own experience.Evocations of childhood are expressed with deliberately shrunken proportions,cropped sleeves, rounded toed shoes, archetypical clothing types that directly recallthose worn in youth. By contrast, adulthood is expressed through recognizedsignifiers of propriety and chic - gloves and handbags, brooches, tailoring, the littleblack dress. Childhood is a moment of impulsive, natural rebellion, here reflected inthe liberation of a dichotomous mixing of different codifications of dress, pajamaswith outerwear, proper with improper, right with wrong. Mnemonic devices, clothescan make us both think back, and project forwards.
Those components of duality and recollection find counterparts in materials andconstruction. Bonding and fusing meld together different fabrics and combinedisparate garments, sweaters and cardigans in silk and cashmere, poplin skirts withknit, while shearling is treated to mimic precious fur. Silk dresses are creased andmolded to cotton jersey sheaths, volumes reduced but the impression of the originalgarment remaining, a trace of its antecedent.
As the collection reconsiders characteristic signifiers of life through the vocabulary ofclothing, so our literal vocabulary can be readdressed. Girlishness is a word we canrevalue, from a pejorative gendered noun, anchored to age, to a universal idiomexpressive of the strength of rebellion, a spirit of freedom and individuality, oneattribute of a richer whole. Perceived as an inherent component of Miu Miu, itshould be examined not as alone trait but as a fundamental aspect of a widertemperament – a notion expressed through a cast of personalities who each embodythis ever-shifting Miu Miu persona. They include Kristin Scott Thomas, Dara Allen,Ethel Cain, Guillaume Diop, Luther Ford, Angel Haze, Qin Huilan, Little Simz,Jasmin Savoy Brown and Ángela Molina, who also features in Miu Miu Women’sTales.
Contemporaneity allows divergent creative processes to arrive at paradoxicallycorrelated results. The Palais d’Iéna is punctuated by video installations created bythe Belgian-American artist Cécile B. Evans, art considered as a tool to enrich andexpand conversation around people. Conceived independently of the collection, bychance the notions of the survival of memory in their art finds echo within theclothes. This is a shared language, one informed by the moment we all live within, auniversal message nevertheless resonant with our unique experience.
