The early 2000s in Miu Miu's SS22 collection

Among the closing shows of Paris Fashion Week, one of those that attracted attention was that of Miu Miu who sent on the catwalk a series of classic looks with the lower hem of almost every garment brutally cut off. The result was to transform woven sweaters with shirts underneath into tops that revealed bras; pleated skirts that become outrageously mini and a very low trouser waist. The immediate reference is obviously to the red carpet of the early 2000s, to the microskirts of Paris Hilton and Christina Aguilera, to the perpetually uncovered navels and to the low lives that let the hem of a thong emerge. But the reference to the Y2K aesthetic, however, has not remained isolated to quotationism and has joined two other trends of the moment: the first, that of androgyny or genderlessness of clothes, is a trend of the catwalks; the second, is a mixture of a personal aesthetic that Miuccia has always cultivated in her own way that on TikTok has reappeared this year under the name of old money aesthetic, a kind of enhanced version of the preppy.  

The peculiarity of the wave that on TikTok has been defined as old money aesthetic is precisely its ability to accommodate contrasts: the clothes are very well-mannered and conservative, but their lengths and centimeters of skin that leave uncovered reveal a hidden rebellious nature. The first references that come to mind are Lana del Rey in the National Anthem video with A$AP Rocky, the 90s style icons that appear in the moodboards of @sportyandrich, Blair Waldorf of Gossip Girl and Sarah Michelel Gellar in Cruel Intentions but also Lady Diana and Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy in their most sportswear moments – but of course the show was not limited to this. The contrast is used here by Miuccia to give thickness and vitality to the collection: a contrast between the rigor of the clothes and the tears that seem to be made with a scissors only a few minutes before; the contrast between the austerity of the bourgeois/collegial uniform and the sudden sensuality of uncovered skin. A contrast that, needless to say, belongs very much to the style of Miuccia Prada.

In the background of the catwalk flowed a surreal video of the comedian Meriem Bennani who staged a fake front row of guests who reacted exaggeratedly to the looks. The atmosphere was bizarre, the animations superimposed on the faces that appeared on the video recalled the animated filters of social media – a mood halfway between the traditional and the exalted that was reflected in the revisited uniforms sent on the catwalk, as if to reread the canons of the classic wardrobe for another generation.