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Moments of beauty, touches of history, pieces of life. The Spring/Summer 2024 Miu Miu collection by Miuccia Prada explores a rationale of beauty today - exploding, redressing. In an ever-changing world, beauty must echo the complexity of our era: this collection is a search for a reflective definition, a reactive address of beauty for modern times. Quotations of past styles emphasise the importance and meaning of history - they are embedded with the memories of the values of past times, reevaluated. Instead of rigid paradigms, there is a radical expansion, a rich plurality. Not beauty, but beauties, an embracing of unique characters, the joy of life. A significance is afforded to the individual, expressed through both fashion and cast. A citing of history can simultaneously be a tool for learning, a manner of discovering meaning, and a profound interrelation to humanity. It is a means to connect with people, their lives, their experience. Traces of living mark the clothes - washing, distressing, marked suedes and leathers, an exaggeration of the passage of time expressive of the notion of prior use, of existing love. Prototypical ideas of clothing hold significance. Swimwear, sportswear, evening wear. Men’s bathing slips, kid-mohair tailoring, antique underwear, New Balance 530, Church’s Shanghai, elegant dresses in embroideries and brocades. The notion of meaningful design is expressed through a connection with intention, with objective and benefit. Garments devised for specific purpose, functions and events are here remixed in unanticipated combinations - a maillot de bain with a cocktail dress, a petticoat with a blazer. Their juxtapositions convey a modern style that, in turn, is a mirror of different lives, the multiplicity of contemporary identity and the positivity of the endless possibilities of today. The interventions forged between Miu Miu and contemporary artists are never devised as embellishment to fashion: independent and free, they evince a congruent intellectual viewpoint, each speaking about the present. This season, Qatari- American artist Sophia Al-Maria situates the Miu Miu show within a landscape of technological ruins, an imaginary history invented inside the Palais d’Iéna created in collaboration with OMA. Al-Maria’s specially-created work, Gravity & Grace, depicts a confrontation between reality and fantasy - a reflection of the intention of her body of work as a whole. Through this, she explores the meaning of storytelling, through the history of humanity to today - to transmit the past, share the present and imagine the future. The character cast included Eddy Aldridge, May Andersen, Mame Bineta Sane, Petra Collins, Rosemary Ferguson, Amelia Gray Hamlin, Gigi Hadid, Troye Sivan, Liu Wen, Karolin Wolter and Cailee Spaeny who closed the show. #MiuMiu #MiuMiuSS24 #MiucciaPrada
