There's no time to waste for Miu Miu FW26 No fairy tales, no dreams, just real clothes for people who are going through it
One of the phrases that Miuccia Prada repeats most often when speaking about her work at Prada and Miu Miu is that the true purpose of a fashion brand is to create «real clothes for real people.» Strip away the storytelling, the celebrities, the ambassadors, the fashion editorials and red carpet styling, and what a brand ultimately has to do is dress people: those who work, those who study, those who travel, those who dream. This inspiration - let’s call it that - behind the collections of the Prada Group has consistently and for a long time shaped the creative direction of its main brands, Prada and Miu Miu, with the only distinction between the two contained in another famous quote by the founder: «Prada is what I am and Miu Miu is what I would like to be.» Looking at Miu Miu’s FW26, which showed in Paris just moments ago, one might wonder whether Miuccia Prada, now 76 years old, has stopped looking toward the future with hopeful eyes.
On a patch of worn-out grass, among walls covered in colorful wallpaper, a collection with a distinctly apocalyptic, catastrophic, threatening tone walked the runway. Directed by Croatian filmmaker and longtime Miu Miu collaborator Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, the video introducing the new show portrays a protagonist sitting at an office desk at the bottom of a swimming pool, frantically trying to type on a computer as it detaches from the desk and floats toward the surface. The clip foreshadows all the urgency, impatience, irritation and frustration that seep through the new collection: a 9-to-5 that offers no respite, a life crushed by capitalist duties that bring no happiness, the “luxury” of being able to work while more and more regions of the world are struck by military attacks.
In this FW26, there is no time to have fun with clothes, with bright palettes or unnecessary accessories: there is only one hat, a large and warm colbacco made of fur and decorated with rhinestones, and the styling is reduced to a minimum, with jacket-and-trouser suits in wrinkled leather and powder-colored babydoll dresses worn with nothing more than a pair of sneakers (inspired by the brand’s 1990s editions, bubble sole included) and large sparkling earrings.
This is not a collection filled with total black looks, a trend we have seen repeated insistently on the Milan runways, yet it does not explode with color either, featuring among its main shades burgundy, beige, mustard yellow, peach pink and endless scales of gray. While SS26 allowed itself a bit more playfulness, with aprons and uniforms in bright prints, here the world of work is told through the total absence of leisure. Some codes that are now fixed within the Miu Miu DNA (and also Prada) return, such as worn-out outer layers and crumpled fabrics, although in this case it is not the treatment of leather and linen that steals the spotlight. Four (blonde) icons of the 1990s appeared on the runway: Chloë Sevigny, Gemma Ward and Gillian Anderson and Kristen McMenamy.
In this FW26, it is as if the models dressed reluctantly, in a hurry, with the sole aim of leaving the house wearing something - no matter if it is no longer the right size or if the proportions are not exactly flattering. It is certainly a Miu Miu collection, but this time the work of Miuccia Prada and stylist Lotta Volkova conveys a rather heavy aura of sadness and disinterest. Once the brand entertained younger generations and intrigued more mature intellectuals, with skirts growing ever shorter and a reversal of the common perception of the work uniform, whereas today what we saw on the runway is a melancholic woman, clearly tired, who misses the 1990s and therefore goes searching for them in her wardrobe.
This time Miu Miu does not seem to ask itself what good taste, luxury or fashion truly mean. Instead, it questions what it means to create clothes in a world that seems to be falling apart. What does the consumer want today, if not to feel protected and wrapped in a heavy sheepskin coat? And what are creatives searching for, if not that focus and that artistic drive that seemed so alive thirty years ago? Beyond the commercial sequin dresses and the versatile leather suits, Miu Miu seems to tell us something simple: fashion is nothing more than a wardrobe. Real life is everything that happens before and after the moment we get dressed.
