Are You a Miu Miu Girl or a Prada Woman?

UGLY: horrid or unpleasant, especially to the sight; unsightly, hideous. – Merriam-Webster.

Lately, I’ve been pondering somewhat on the question of ugliness.

Not ugliness in that symbolic sense – the malice and malignancies that haunt our world and afflict our feeds. We’ve got enough of that already.

I’m talking about ugliness of the brutally blunt bodily variety – the kind that the schoolyard bully would make you cry with, the kind that made you slather questionable slabs of slime onto your face for hours on end hoping to remedy, the kind that so many of us who don’t happen to conform to normative notions of beauty have lived with practically all our lives.

Naturally, in fashion, we dread the ugly; we’re repulsed by the ugly. Yet, we can’t take our eyes off the ugly either – we’re utterly mesmerized by it.

Case in point: In 1996, what was then dubbed “the ugliest shoe in the world” – a pair of antiqued leather Prada platforms in foul shades of brown—sold out nearly immediately. In the same vein, 25 years later, Miu Miu models strode down the SS22 runway in micro-miniskirts with ragged hems—seemingly slashed with scissors in a The Substance-esque spree of eleventh-hour hysteria—that put Miu Miu squarely atop the Lyst Index for 2022!

In fact, as heritage houses, in their hyperfixation for taste, seem to increasingly acquire an almost algorithmic homogeneity of sorts, Mrs. Prada (always referred to as such out of respect for her matriarchal, if not monarchical, standing within the industry) continues at 75 to hack away at traditional notions of beauty, skirt hems, pant lengths, and occasionally her own hair.

And that’s what makes her – and her two eponymous labels – so intriguing.

Who is the Miu Miu Girl?

But there’s more to Mrs. Prada than age and association that warrants the formal address. “A ‘Mrs.’ at the hands of Prada,” writes Dazed, “is an abstraction, an identity in flux, which gives space for the inconsistencies, liminality, and contradictions at the heart of her work.”

It’s that at Miu Miu, too, launched in 1993 as a risqué offshoot of her grandfather’s original operations, where we get to see the full extent and exploration of her eccentricities.

And explore it did – its debut lineup at NYFW featured none other than Kate Moss; Drew Barrymore fronted its first campaign (shot by Ellen von Unwerth), and its steady rotation of It-girls included Maggie Gyllenhaal, Milla Jovovich, Vanessa Paradis, Lindsay Lohan and Lindsey Wixon. But it was perhaps Chloë Sevigny, fresh off Larry Clark’s Kids fame (not to mention that sensational Sonic Youth MV), who truly set the tone for the Miu Miu girl when she opened the brand’s SS96 show at Bryant Park at only 20 years old!

To this day, it’s still that inimitable sense of cool – a motley mix of femininity, creativity, and rebellious youth – that continues to drive the Miu Miu girl, be it Chinese septuagenarian Qin Hiulan, longtime client of the label, proud nepo baby and influencer extraordinaire Hailey Bieber, pop-singer Troye Sivan, or Oscar-winning (former) Prada Villain, Willem Dafoe.

But who is the Miu Miu girl, you ask? “Like Virginia Woolf goes to a beach party,” quips actor Emma Corrin. “Funny,” notes journalist Susanna Lau before adding, “Smart. I don’t want to say intellectual because that sounds a bit pretentious.”

“She’s in on the joke,” says NY- and LA-based vintage dealer Brandon Veloria, “She’s politically interested. She reads.” If that sounds vague, it’s because it is. Because to truly understand the Miu Miu girl, we need to appreciate the Prada woman.

So, Who is the Prada Girl?

It must be noted, however, that Miu Miu, with its “sheer nylonette and dresses à la Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion,” as Mrs. Prada herself describes to W Magazine, is by no means a diffusion label to Prada. If anything, it’s just as expensive. “For me, they are equally important,” she clarifies. Miu Miu, she adds, is “more charming.” And more naughty? She smiles. “Yes.”

It makes sense that Prada, which has been operating (successfully, too) since 1913, stands for sophistication. Think slick blazers, sleek slingbacks, LBDs, and LBBs abound.

“Italian neorealism is her favorite genre because it is so raw and real,” writes Spark Magazine of the Prada lady, “Her favorite movies to rewatch are Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City, and Victorio De Sica’s Umberto D. because it reminds her how much her worldview has changed over the years.”

Indeed, Madame Miuccia isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel but rather rethink it—her SS25 show, an ode to algorithms, serves as an antidote to the “era of extreme information, immersed in a constant stream of content.”

Similarly, her legendary SS96 lineup (titled Banal Eccentricity) has since come to be known as Ugly Chic, a transgressive exploration of murky browns and bilious greens (that Robin Givhan of The Washington Post titled “Miuccia Sludge”) in patterns that “might have been adapted from the back of an envelope on which a bored Prada was doodling. They aren’t nice at all.”

Shortly after, for SS/2000, Madame Prada subverted the paradigm with her Sincere Chic lineup – a fundamentally unsexy collection of passé pussy blouses from the ‘50s that would’ve otherwise been perfectly acceptable had they not been juxtaposed against her Ugly Chic a few seasons ago.

So, the Prada woman has, in fact, very little to do with tastes or traditions but rather the idea of them, distorted to make us question our own realities.

Are They One and the Same?

Coco Chanel was famously known to posit that fashion should be logical; Elsa Schiaparelli, on her surrealist bent, had responded obliquely, “Why?”

And when you think about it, this temporality, not entirely unlike their spiritual sibling over at Schiap, drives both the Prada and Miu Miu labels, likely stemming from their creative lead herself. Unlike Dior’s New Look, Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking, or Gucci’s Horsebit, Madame Miuccia’s quintessential signage deals with the psychological rather than the physical—she excels in accessories, and RTW alike yet isn’t confined to either.

More specifically, they elicit in the onlooker a deep-set sense of discomfort – sometimes aesthetic, sometimes ideological, rarely veering towards the safe or the sterile, yet entirely true to form. It’s why she’s still the one creating, as opposed to jumping onto, trends, as witnessed by the troupes of TikTok twinks layering polo t-shirts over their blue button-downs in an attempt to recreate Troye Sivan’s preppy SS24 runway look. Or why the girlies in GRWM videos are embracing the strategic clutter of their messy, charm-bedazzled bags.

It’s madness, of course, but there’s a method to the madness.

And it’s given us “ugly” folks – the not tall, not blonde, not white, and not conventionally attractive misfits – a refuge within the wider world of fashion, be it as a prudent and pragmatic Prada person, a younger, naiver, wilder-at-heart Miu Miu girl (or boy – no one’s judging!), or sometimes, well, both.

Because when Madame Prada prescribes to switch things up – or maybe occasionally take a slide down the office window – who are we to refuse?