Miu MiuFall/Winter 2021
Collective strength, a community of spirit. Miuccia Prada draws together diverse groups – gangs of women – for the Miu Miu Fall/Winter 2021 fashion show. The result is a unique vision that could only have been imagined before, a voyage through the mountains – a fashion show in the snow. A dream ‘Miu Miu Mountain Club’ is created, models exploring the landscape of Cortina d’Ampezzo -in the heart of Dolomites Alps-, captured on film in a difficult and brave undertaking. It is about escape, about dreaming – making fantasy a reality.
Coming together, the Miu Miu women set out on a journey through the mountains: exploring the landscape, on a quest heading towards an unknown goal. Bravery in endeavour is reflected by courage in clothing – they are dressed for the extreme.
As a fashion show in the snow is incongruous, so garments can challenge perception and context. Outfits combine different intentions, different dreams and realities, to create different characters. Inside and outside, protective and seductive, – intentions are multiple, like the diverse identities found within each woman. And, in turn, each individual is attracted to liked-minded personas, the single becoming the collective. They form alliances, kinships. And they walk together.
In a pretence of practicality, the language of sportswear fuses with fashion. Using the vernacular of mountaineering dress, they make gestures to the landscape. Teddy-bear faux fur, padded layers and knit ski helmets and ski masks frame faces, suggesting warmth and safety, beautifying necessary means of protection for a hazardous terrain. Silk satin dresses and lace convey delicacy and intimacy. Outerwear, inner lives.
There are inherent tensions when these languages are combined – a dreamlike state, when the practical is romanced through exaggeration, when the fragile can be reinvented to become brave. The utilitarian can become beautiful and pleasurable; the decorative can suddenly have reason, new purpose. Padded sportswear borrows its satin and pastel colors from fantasies of lingerie, slip dresses are executed in heavy wools, studded with metal like imaginary armor – warrior lingerie. Strength and fragility, courage and aggression. The realities inside all our fantasies. Practical fantasies.
