Miu Miu’s Spring/Summer 2024 Ready-to-Wear Collection

Bringing down the curtain on a confusing and emotionally fraught season, it took the great Miuccia Prada to give such a coherent, empathetic and confidence-building show for women, by a woman. Miu Miu was a brilliantly confirming run-through and remix of all the clothes we love, hoard, and rely on; the basic and the glittery, the sporty and the bonkers.

The unconventional combinations of garments—apparently happy accidents of styling—were aimed, Prada communicated in a press release, at an “embracing of unique characters, the joy of life.” Her bespectacled Miu Miu characters in action were going about their business dealing with feeling everyday messy (yet also looking great); greasy hair, coats thrown over nighties, sloppy old unbuckled saddle shoes included. Some were lugging handbags stuffed with a change of footwear, as you do.

It might also be the first time that neon sticking plasters have been used as ‘beauty’ devices on a runway—it takes a woman to know about summer sandal blisters, and make a joke about them.

In a season when there’s been so much talk about the need for ‘real’ clothes, straight-up Miu Miu polo shirts, Oxford shirts, trench coats, and school uniform jackets were all present and correct—but then worn with Prada’s favorite underpants or funny short frilly techno-tutus topped with tracksuit drawstring waistbands.

It wouldn’t be Prada without a political message. A video installation commissioned from Sophia Al-Maria played in the background throughout, showing stuntwoman Ayesha Hussain in fantasy super-hero modern-mythological mode, fiercely drawing a sword and aiming arrows from a bow. Well, yes, it has to be said: it is an unceasing battle out there for women in the world, and we all know it. Still, it’s good to see that a designer such as Miuccia Prada sort of has our backs—cocooned in a great big opera coat—if we so wish.