Miu Miu’s ‘Performcore’ S/S'23 Show

From a collaboration with the artist Shuang Li to FKA Twigs shutting down the runway, British Vogue’s fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen brings you five things to know about Miu Miu’s sportswear-inspired spring/summer 2023 collection.
 

It was about simplicity

“I’m very serious, but I’m also fun. I am both,” Miuccia Prada said after her Miu Miu show, which riffed on the same themes of simplicity of her Prada show in Milan – but through the sassy, sexy, youth-centric look she’s established for Miu Miu in recent seasons. Adding to that silhouette of skimpy miniskirts and cropped tennis jumpers, she investigated how clothing borrowed from the unassuming sports wardrobe, or garments incredibly simple in structure, can make great fashion.

It was ‘performcore’

Prada asked the European-based Chinese artist Shuang Li to fill the Palais d’Iéna with her signature trippy projections and a soundtrack featuring a spoken-word love poem. With those elements as her backdrop, she sent out a Miu Miu collection of squarely-cut fabrics wrapped around the body with simple fastenings like drawstring or clip buckles. They turned into apron-like skirts, ponchos and dresses, and some very bold cummerbunds and bandeau tops that felt distinctly lifted from a performer’s wardrobe.

It was very layered

Like the Prada collection she presented in Milan two weeks before, the Miu Miu collection played with elements of simplicity and took them to the extreme. The opening look was composed of a grey cap-sleeved T-shirt worn over a beige jumper worn over a grey long-sleeved T-shirt worn over a white T-shirt – ordinary clothes made extraordinary through styling. The message here was one of nuance: Things may look straightforward, but nothing is as simple as that.

It continued the Miu Miu moment

The Miu Miu moment that’s been taking the fashion world by storm in recent seasons isn’t going anywhere, and Prada made sure to keep the spirit of her previous collections going. It was felt in blazers that had their lining ripped out and pulled beneath their outer hem to reveal an underlayer to serve like minidresses, stone-washed leather and denim suits that you wanted to wear straight off the runway, and bras and matching skirts in tailoring fabrics for the more boldly inclined.

FKA Twigs closed the show

The cast included male and non-binary models in ‘menswear’ – “the company doesn’t want it, but we sneak it in,” Prada smiled – as well as FKA Twigs, who closed the show. Above all, the feeling was upbeat. “I went through a really… Friends died and so on,” Prada explained. “Recently, I’m in a good mood for personal happenings with my friends.” She said her ambition with Miu Miu is above all to translate her feelings into fashion: “You can have ideas, feelings about the world, but afterwards you have to translate your ideas into clothes that respect those ideas. And that is difficult.”