Thirty years of Miu Miu

Rosemary Ferguson laid her head on a vintage sofa, wearing a white tank top and brown shorts, as Corrine Day photographed her. In one shot, Day captured the essence of being a teenager soaring on daydreams, balanced precariously between the whimsy of innocence and the severity of growing up. This was the campaign for Miu Miu’s SS94, the first one shot by the house since its first launch, the previous year. «Prada is what at the end I am, and Miu Miu is what I would like to be,» designer and founder Miuccia Prada would say right after the FW97 show. Exuding playfulness, Miu Miu's designs embodied a spirit of rebellion that needed to be taken seriously from the very beginning. From the way the models stood to their haircuts, everything has always been able to reflect the brand's ability to delightfully cross the line between the masculine and feminine, just like when Chloë Sevigny stared unsmilingly at us, sporting cropped hair and a white shirt, as she sat on a chair for SS96 like a young boy playing office.

Miu Miu 1994

Miu Miu 1994

Miu Miu 1996

Miu Miu 1995

Miu Miu 1995

Miu Miu 1996

Miu Miu 1996

Miu Miu 1996

Miu Miu 1994

Ever since Miu Miu's early days, Miuccia Prada has been collaborating with the best photographers, stylists and art directors in the industry. Creatives like David James, Fabien Baron, Mert and Markus defined the brand’s campaigns in ways that had never been seen before. London was having a major cultural moment in the 90s, and Eli Wakamatsu, a makeup artist for Miu Miu and Prada’s campaigns during this decade, noted that London-based creatives who were shooting for Dazed, i-D and the Face were unique in the way that they did not let commerciality reflect in their creative work. Prada moved from showcasing at NYFW to London in 1997, which led Tim Blanks to comment on the designer's incredible instinct for the moment. London-based creative Katie Grand styled their FW02 collection and has since then been a constant collaborator. «Katie is the kind of impresario you always want in the room,» reflected Sam Levy, who worked on the brand’s SS19 campaign. With Miu Miu, Prada explored how fashion could intersect with art and be intellectual. The house is now collaborating with stylists, artists and video-makers with visual languages of their own like M/M Paris and more recently Lucca Lutzy, letting the creators influence the campaigns through their subjective points of view.  «For any fashion brand, it is hard to stay current,» said Wakamatsu, «Miu Miu has kept the fresh, playful youthfulness to this day.»

Upon Miu Miu’s thirtieth year, as the brand just showed its SS24 collection in Paris, eleven creatives reflect on what it was like to work on some of the most iconic campaigns in the history of the fashion. 

Eli Wakamatsu

«I missed my plane to Milan on the first meeting with Miuccia,» said Wakamatsu, recalling the iconic FW99 campaign. She had forgotten her passport at Heathrow airport. «Luckily, I made it to the meeting, but after that I received call sheets with the headline ‘DON’T FORGET THE PASSPORT’  whenever I was due to leave abroad!» Working on editorials for renowned british magazines such as Dazed, The Face and i-D, with Norbert Schoerner and Nancy Rohde, it did not come as a surprise to her to take part in the photoshoot, considering both of Rohde and Schoerner were also part of it. Onboard for the next three seasons of Miu Miu and Prada, she recalled, «Miuccia was a frank and charismatic visualist. Hairdresser Eugene Souleiman and I had a model to work on and create the look for the campaign after being briefed with sets. After each look, she would say, ‘Bella! How about a little bit more sexy, no?’, ‘Bella! Try a little more punk?’.»

Schoerner called the look of the FW99 campaign «a narrative» and created the set inspired by Blade Runner, Dune, Space Odyssey and Fellini’s films. The set was even used as a background for the FW99 menswear campaign, working with the same team for a consistent visual identity. A digital revolution in photography made primitive image-making technology available to creatives who knew its usage. «What Norbert did for this series of campaigns was something that had never been done before,» she said recalling images being layered like collages with vibrant backgrounds of the cityscape, «And the result made many people wonder how it was done.»

Nancy Rohde

«The campaign shots for both Miu Miu and Prada were pretty gruelling,» recalled Rohde. «We were usually in a studio in Milan or London for three weeks non-stop, working crazy hours. In those days, no one shot a campaign in a day or two, but Miu Miu and Prada shoots were longer than any other houses. Miuccia really wanted to break boundaries, she wanted to push us as far as we could go. She’s not interested in the mediocre.» Prada strived for the new and pushed aesthetic tastes to drive a new sensibility. «She was always very successful in that,» said Rohde, «Very clever in deciphering just the right moment to throw just the right thing into the public arena.» 

Prada was trying to make viewers reassess fashion through her collections. «Miuccia was always very hands-on regarding the campaigns,» said Rohde, «She was at every creative meeting, every pre-production meeting. We sent her images every night by email. Not so easy to download images in 1999! She chose what she liked, and she often rejected everything. She admired contemporary art and she saw fashion, especially campaigns, as an extension of that – they needed to be intellectual. She never came on set during the shoot. «She respected Norbert as a creator and artist,» she said, «And her role was almost as a benefactor who really wanted to get the best out of the creatives she was commissioning. Sometimes painful but never unrewarding.»

Horst Diekgerdes

«Miu Miu at that time was the younger sister of the Prada woman – intellectual, but still quite raw, starting her independent existence, learning from errors,» said Horst Diekgerdes, who photographed the FW00 campaign and later worked on the menswear line, Prada Rosso and Prada Sports. «We had a model [Jenny Vatheur] whom nobody had seen before,» he said, «Paired with a young photographer who had proven his presence in the six relevant magazines of the time. Miuccia liked the idea of a first time experience, I reckon.»

Prada preferred that the photographer chosen for the campaign had never shot an advertisement for any fashion houses before, and definitely not for any high street or fast fashion brand. After they checked him out intellectually, Diekgerdes joked, he was on board. With no predetermined storyline, he had considerable freedom to explore the limits of the concept that Prada, David James and David Bradshaw had outlined, for potential visuals that aligned with Miu Miu. «Their previous campaigns were quite dark and dreamy and a bit downbeat – melancholic in a way,» he recalled, «I wanted it to be bright and sunny.» Working without a deadline or a budget which made it seem like a movie, they pulled 12-15 hours for two weeks. «When I presented our work to Miuccia, I was very nervous,» he recalled, «She took me aside gently and said, ‘You must know I hate to like it, but I do like it!’ I had overcome a personal challenge, knowing that this would not be her favourite campaign ever. Too ‘beautiful’ for her mood back then.»

Martina Hoogland Ivanow

«I had a long working relationship with Alister Mackie from Dazed and Another Magazine from the mid-90s onwards,» said Martina Hoogland Ivanow, who shot the FW01 campaign and ended up also doing Prada for that season, «I think the assignment came from that end.» Seeing artificially coloured lights as a contrast to cold widows in Mongolian and Serbian winters during a trip inspired her. «This was later the inspiration for the cage-like scenography and tight composition for the shoot,» she said, «A sense of inverted walls and claustrophobia, both from the architecture, lack of light and the cold.»

Mackie and Katy England were the reasons why Ivanow had started collaborating with the fashion industry. Images were sent to Milan for Prada’s feedback everyday. «The photographers and the team had a lot of artistic freedom,» she said, «She [Prada] seemed to enjoy that method. I am sure this made the process very costly. The Miu Miu shoot alone was over a month long. It was closer to a small film set and quite a big team.» The brand sponsored her resource trip for lights, and as a filmmaker, it was a luxury for her to experiment in that way. «I guess that is why the campaigns that came out then, as well as the previous years, had an air of film stills,» she said, «They stood out.»

David James

«I first started collaborating with Miu Miu on the Fall/Winter campaign in 1996,» said David James, «All the collaborations I worked on were outstanding, but because the Fall/Winter 96 campaign was the first, I would say this was the most memorable, especially because the collection was based on a quintessentially Miu Miu trope, the uniform. This informed the direction of the campaign which was presented as a series of exquisitely painterly portraits of Tanga Moreau photographed by Glen Luchford. Tanga had just started modelling and had this incredibly strong presence and attitude, which Glen captured perfectly using her body language to convey the idea of a young cadet standing to attention.»

Reminiscing on working with Prada, he said, «Working with Mrs Prada was always an amazing experience because she is so exceptionally creative, has a very clear vision and strives for excellence and quality in everything she does, so for fellow creatives, she is a dream to work with. I always felt empowered and supported working with Miu Miu and that’s the best possible environment to create and collaborate in.»

Miranda July

«Verde Visconti and the entire team is so incredibly respectful of artists and their process,» reflected Miranda July on Somebody(2014), Miu Miu's 8th Women’s Tale and the messaging app of the same name she was able to create in one year of work, «And at the core of this is a kind of bravery, a boldness — they love to say yes to something that seems impossible.»

«It was such a deep pleasure,» said July, reflecting on walking for their SS23 show, «Like a trust fall into a world that appears to run much more smoothly than my own.» Looking at the Miu Miu collection in 2014, she was able to imagine the colloquial clothes which had inspired their sophisticated designs like waitress uniforms or grandma sweaters. «It was fun to sort of mentally reverse engineer them and then dress actual waitresses and grandmothers in the looks,» she said, recalling that many of the characters she created were inspired by the collection. «When I did my movie and app with Miu Miu,» said July, «They felt, to me, a bit young and sweet, in a tongue-in-cheek way – bows and cute collars and nothing too revealing. In recent years, they have become dead cool, very sexy but often in a wonderfully ugly way, like pushing something – layers. Length, neutrality, until it almost becomes its opposite, a rebellion. Oh you want to see me in a short skirt? Is this short enough for you asshole?»

Sam Levy

«Katie Grand called me to say she was a fan of the film I’d shot called Frances Ha,» said Sam Levy who was the DOP for their SS19 campaign film, «and asked if I would be interested in doing a campaign together.» The concept was to show a group of edgy young women, he was told, inspired by the girl gang culture of the 60s and 70s, with Juliette Lewis as their leader, who provokes one of them to cut off her hair. Levy met with the directors Steve Mackey and Douglas Hart. «We had coffee at their hotel and just vibed,» he said, «We discussed movies and books and bands that we all love as a means of discovering the look of this campaign.»

Urged to treat it like a narrative feature film, he wanted the photography to emphasize punk. Working with Lewis, Maya Hawke and Lourdes Leon, whose faces would radiate danger, the art department found vintage neon fixtures and old Canon lenses which were used to film ‘Alien’ (1979). «We rigged two blocks in Brooklyn with cherry red light and absinthe green,» he recalled, «We shot all night. The models were bathed in the deepest red I’ve ever used on any project before or since.» It was a true collaboration, he said, between a group of creative artists in their prime. «A true fashion icon, Katie is the rare collaborator who inspires everyone to do the best work of their lives,» he said. «What a mind – and so fun. I truly feel like I’m in the presence of greatness around Katie.»

Małgorzata Szumowska

«I was invited by Verde Visconti, since she liked my films,» said Małgorzata Szumowska, who worked on the 19th edition of Women’s Tales, Nightwalk, «We clicked right away.» Fashion had always been close to cinema, she reflected, and clothing can reveal so much about a character. It was clear from the beginning that they would use Miu Miu’s fashion. They wanted to show the fluidity of gender and the power of clothing in making one feel good about oneself. «The most fitting person who came to mind was our dear friend Filipka, who is trans,» she said, «She loves clothes and dressing up. So, she became the inspiration for this film. We wanted to be able to have fun with these outfits.» The one who was cast opposite her was Raffey Cassidy, who was an obvious choice for them as she is a Miu Miu muse, and she had starred in their most recent film then. 

She recalled the strong presence of the Miu Miu team during the shoot. «Verde Visconti, Bridgitte Lacomb, Max Brun – they were all there,» she said, «They all came to Warsaw, took part in the shoot and even sat till 4am with our crew, when we had night shoots. At the same time, they gave us complete artistic freedom. They cheered us the whole way through. It’s rare to meet such great and generous people. It was an amazing experience. We’re from Eastern Europe, and it’s not always that we get treated this way.»

Isabel Sandoval 

After Isabel Sandoval’s film Lingua Franca premiered at Venice 2019, the head of the Giornate Degli Autori section Gaia Furrer recommended her to Verde and Max, and the latter contacted her in November 2020. «Exactly a month later, we were shooting in LA,» said Sandoval. Shangri–La, the 21st Women’s Tale was shot in three days, in the height of the pandemic, within COVID protocols, as the Miu Miu team reviewed everything remotely or on FaceTime. Working with understated characters, luxury fashion was extravagant and indulgent to Sandoval, who captured the tension between the oppressive reality and imagined shangri-la of a Filipina immigrant farmworker in the US Depression. «What on the surface looks like dress-up, is emancipating for the protagonist,» said Sandoval, who chose the fashion after imagining her transformed character as regal and god-like, «It liberates her from the oppression of the real world and puts her in touch with the possibility of what she could become. In the end, she’s back in the real world, but she’s emboldened to take it on.»

She was surprised to feel comfortable and find vulnerability, playing a glamorised character. «This also has to do with having transitioned,» she said, «And more accepting of myself and my journey.» She cut the film over Christmas and New Year and finished post-production in a month. «Before Shangri-La premiered, Verde emailed me about how much Mrs. Prada loved the short,» she said, «Months later at the Prada dinner in Venice, Mrs. Prada was so gracious in person and so effusive with her praise.»

Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg

«Miuccia had seen some sculptures that we made and had never shown» said Nathalie Djurberg, «She really liked them and asked if we wanted to make jewellery out of them, and we loved that idea.» Prada first met them in 2005, and three years later they were exhibiting at Fondazione Prada. For Djurberg, the colourful pills from the FW22 jewellery and the animated animal signified «the urge to have something more or different – escape reality and the fascination for something sparkly.» Hans recalled shooting the jewellery video shoot with Bjork’s daughter Isadora Barney. 

«We wanted to create a disruption of the show,» said Berg, on the format of the FW22 showcase, «That pops up unexpectedly – put different ideas in juxtaposition with each other. I saw the show as a story and created the music as a narration that kept on increasing in intensity. It was, for both the models and the animations, two stories happening in parallel.»

Meriem Bennani

When Mrs Prada told Meriem Bennani that the SS22 collection was serious, Bennani was surprised. «I said, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend anyone, but this is so fun,» she said. «It’s not serious and classic at all. That made her [Mrs Prada] laugh.» The curators of Fondazione Prada who approached her told her the collection played with proportions, which she found playful, and it resonated with her work, which draws from cartoons and challenges dimensions. If one looked at the clothes before they were cut, she said, it was classic silhouettes – the cut became a gesture which disrupted the classic. 

Prada thought a conventional show with a digital broadcast was boring and wanted Bennani to create something new. Within twenty days, Bennani created google-framed installations surrounding the runway, played with a surreal audience who did not exist during the actual show, along with creating a radical start and a finish to the show video. «A lot of my work deals with femininity, women in my family who I grew up around, ideas around like bodies, love, what's sexy, what's ugly,» she said. She connected those ideas through her mother, who starred in the video. Prada was protective of artists, she reflected, and did not wish to bring the Fondazione artists into fashion, like she wanted to preserve their artistry somehow. «As if fashion was dangerous or something,» she said, «I think her Prada's approach to fashion is like an artist’s. It is political and she really thinks about breaking conventions.»