For fans of Miuccia Prada, Miu Miu is now the go-to label for the purest expression of Mrs Prada’s singular genius. The latest Fall/Winter 2021 collection Miu Miu just showed was easily one of the most directional of the season, and it showed off the dream-making and thought provocation that fashion can inspire.
Set in the Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the Dolomites Alps of northeastern Italy, the brand came up with a fictional “Miu Miu Mountain Club”, fashioned after alpine mountaineering clubs.
The collection saw a coterie of girls exploring this vast mountainous landscape. The big idea was bravery, a quality that Mrs Prada compared to the imagination of women. New places, new ideas and new frontiers, on the whole, are very much on all our minds these days, and the collection celebrated the courage it takes to venture into territories uncharted and unknown.
Miuccia Prada created a fictional “Miu Miu Mountain Club”, fashioned after alpine mountaineering clubs.
The club and the shared activity of scaling the alps was Mrs Prada’s way of bringing a multitude of women, dressed in different ways and with different characters.
This idea of multiplicity was also extended to the design language of the clothes. The main concept in this collection was a fusion of sportswear with fashion.
The practical aspect of mountaineering gear is fused with the feminine and girly codes of Miu Miu: padded jackets made for warmth and protection cut from the house’s signature quilted leather. Ski helmets made in colourful knits that were as much protective as beautifying; cargo trousers cut from luxurious cashmere.
You can easily see stylist’s Lotta Volkova’s witty take on both the prosaic and the glamorous all over the collection.
Even the intimate and delicate qualities of lingerie were subverted: slip dresses and negligees were cut in nubby, textured wool and embellished with metal studs; and the padded outerwear borrowed their satin and pastel shades from the boudoir.
Miu Miu’s Fall/Winter 2021 collection was also significant because it had a new, different look to it. The brand commissioned Lotta Volkova – the tastemaker who basically defined the Vetements look – to style this collection, and you can easily see Volkova’s witty take on both the prosaic and the glamorous all over.
The brand called this fusion “warrior lingerie”, a look that has strength and fragility in equal measure. “The two”, said Mrs Prada, “do not have to be mutually exclusive.”
Below a look at some of our favourite looks.
