Why we love that Miu Miu look

That Miu Miu look. If you know, you know.

It’s a jumper over a buttoned shirt, both cut to just about cover the chest, with a bit of the shirt peeking out. Then, a micro-mini skirt after a long stretch of torso, slinging low and held up with a leather belt.

This is Look 9 from Miu Miu’s Spring 2022 Ready-To-Wear, which took the internet by storm back in October. It wasn’t in the viral meme way, though, unlike the decapitated heads at Gucci or Rihanna’s Guo Pei ‘omelette’ gown at the Met Gala. Instead, you know you’ve made it when you’re all over high fashion twitter with exclamations of adoration, chosen by all the stylists to be worn by it-girls (Zendaya, EmRata, Hailey Bieber, APINK’s NaEun, Emma Corrin, Iris Law), and recreated with DIYs shown off on Instagram. To blow up mainly for absurdity is great, but to be coveted is rare nowadays.

Not that the look is not absurd - it has a touch of it in its ridiculous mini-ness. Its proportions are GLORIOUS, with a woolly jumper whose sleeves are just a tad too long, an exposed midriff and legs covered by a strip of skirt material and socks halfway up the calves. It’s so absurdly impractical. But it’s not implausible either - collared shirts, mini-skirts and loafers are touchstones of the preppy style that has seeped into modern fashion. Miuccia Prada (hence “Miu Miu”, her childhood nickname) just takes these elements somewhere completely new.

The rest of the collection is excellent, and totally coherent. We can see Prada playing with proportions: there are long shirts and long trousers, then long shirts and micro-minis, then cropped shirts with long skirts, and finally (my personal favourite: Look 16) the tiniest strip of a top with a belt over the chest followed by the same belt holding up a micro-mini skirt. An honourable mention goes to Look 42 with the most cosily proportioned jumper and long skirt combination in a sumptuous dyed dark blue knit.

The collection speaks so clearly to the modern notion of ‘cool’ without being imitative, unlike how Hedi Slimane’s Celine is of TikTok style. It borrows from corporate dressing and makes it skimpy, revealing and laid-back without cutting away its power, and takes from prep school uniforms to add a maturity and self-assuredness. It dismantles propriety without surrendering elegance. In an era of pandemic work-from-home, ‘I don’t dream of labour’, OnlyFans millionaires and girlbossing, Miu Miu speaks to a generation grappling with the decay of ideals of corporate employment.

One way in which this collection really falls behind on who the modern woman is is the lack of size inclusivity on the runway, a problem in other Miu Miu seasons as well. The ethos of the collection would in fact be enhanced and nuanced by the inclusion of women beyond size 0 in its flaunting of body positivity amidst male-imposed beauty standards and stereotypical associations of laziness. I don’t think this means the look only works on this particular body type, though. There’s no reason to think so. And while we continue to push for more size inclusivity both on the runway and in production, the good thing about this collection is that the looks are incredibly DIY-able, requiring only a button-up, knit jumper, belt, a skirt or trousers, and a pair of scissors.

It can be cut from a longer skirt or some trousers, a school blouse or a men’s shirt, deriving from either and becoming neither the masculine nor the feminine. Prada dips into and complicates the conventional binary of feminine and masculine, and concomitantly the binaries of propriety and impropriety, and maturity and youth, to demonstrate modern personhood. She pulls it off masterfully as well, especially when androgyny in fashion is typically associated with larger, baggier silhouettes. Instead, she indulges in the use of proportions - both max and mini - to demonstrate this fluidity. Ostensibly with just a pair of scissors, corporate uniform is cut, cropped and frayed, and becomes so cool, so sexy, and so anti-corporate, anti-propriety, anti-traditional masculinity.

We love this Miu Miu look because it encapsulates the modern ideal of ‘cool’ without forgetting about its contradictions. It captures how, as we grow up, we attempt to carve a space for ourselves in a world of adult corporate masculinity, propriety and hierarchy while trying to keep it touch with its antitheses. Prada knows this well: she was in the Italian Communist Party and then joined her family’s luxury leather goods company later in the 70s. Whether she’s found an answer to this dichotomy we don’t know, but with this collection she seems to have found a balance between being Mrs. Prada and being Miu Miu.

Originally published online in Varsity Publications on February 6, 2022.