In recent seasons, there are few garments that have proved quite as ubiquitous as Miu Miu’s sawn-off micro-mini skirt, shown as part of the Italian house’s S/S 2022 collection and riffed upon in the seasons that followed (including an equally viral mini tennis skirt and matching polo for A/W 2022).
It placed the Italian fashion house – founded by Miuccia Prada in 1992 as the playful and provocative counterpart to Prada – squarely as the centre of the contemporary fashion zeitgeist, with shopping app Lyst naming it Brand of the Year for 2022. It’s a defining role the house has continued into 2023: this past February in Paris, for her A/W 2023 collection, the designer proposed librarian-style cardigans, low-slung pencil skirts (the waistband of Miu Miu-branded tights revealed beneath), and models with purposefully ruffled hair. The runway images immediately flooded social media.
Introducing Church’s x Miu Miu
‘[This collection is about] how fashion and fashion design can change perceptions, of things we think we know,’ Miuccia Prada said of the collection, which played on quotidian dress codes. ‘It’s an invitation to reconsider.’
Included in the collection were pairs of double monk-strap shoes and brogues, a collaboration with historic British footwear brand Church’s that has been revealed in full today (24 August 2023) in a new campaign. A play on a perennial classic, the glossy black and tobacco leather styles will no doubt become one of the season’s most-desired styles, cut with a rounder, broader shape than the original Church’s styles from which they took their inspiration. Sporty moulded rubber replaces Church’s classic smooth-leather soles.
‘[The collaboration] infuses the formality of the heritage brand with the free spirit the Miu Miu name represents,’ says the house.
The accompanying campaign mines this feeling of juxtaposition: models recline on patterned ’gentleman’s’ armchairs, their shoes resting on the Miu Miu-designed upholstery and striking typically idiosyncratic poses. Coloured tights are worn throughout, setting a blueprint of how to wear the style during the season ahead.
‘Miu Miu’s signature play between the traditional and the contemporary is upheld,’ the accompanying blurb continues. ‘The reassurance of the familiar is at once celebrated and subverted – undone - to create something new.’
Church's x Miu Miu products will be available in to preorder on miumiu.com from August 29, 2023 and in Miu Miu stores from September 6, 2023.
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