Miu Miu introduces Literary Club, 2025 - “A Woman’s Education”. Under the direction of Miuccia Prada, now in its second iteration, the event this year explores the subjects of girlhood, love and sex education through the work of two international literary masters, French existentialist, Simone de Beauvoir, and Fumiko Enchi, the pen-name for Fumi Ueda, among the most prominent female authors of the Shöwa era in Japan.
Conversations centred around these subjects challenge the rules taught to women for centuries, questioning their veracity and any preconceived ideas. Alongside, live music
performances and prose and poetry readings bring together an enlightened community of cross-disciplinary talent, shedding new light on these historically revered names while enhancing Miu Miu’s commitment to the exploration and advancement of contemporary thought and culture. Located at Circolo Filologico Milanese in Milano, the Miu Miu Literary
A landmark title by each author is championed: opening with “The Power of Girlhood”, an in-depth exploration of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Inseparables. Written in 1954, but, deemed too intimate to publish in her lifetime, only released in 2020, the novella sparks renewed interest in a great feminist thinker. In this work, the writer of The Second Sex (1949) and Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958), charts the journey of a young girl into womanhood and the importance of female friendship in the process of self-determination. On the second day, with “About Love, Sex and Desire”, attention turns to Fumiko Enchi’s The Waiting Years (1957), an explicit account of women’s sexuality, among the first published in her native country. The novel tells the story of Tomo, a woman married to a highly ranked politician, who is tasked with finding a concubine for her husband, thereby sacrificing her needs to a male authority figure. Both works embody the power of the written word as a creative medium through which women may express their most profound and provocative thoughts, in so doing, enriching the lives of other women in return.
Miu Miu Literary Club, “A Woman’s Education”, is conceived to further explore Miu Miu’s ongoing relationship with contemporary culture and with the voices of women in the arts.
In a series of panel conversations curated by Olga Campofreda – a writer and researcher of Italian culture, language and literature – ideas focusing on women’s position in society and contributors’ own experiences of growing up as women in disparate societies will be shared and opened up for conversation, all springing from the words of these extraordinary authors.
