Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu Featured Image

MIU MIU

Index

  1. The Beginning
  2. The Inspiration: Miuccia Prada
  3. The Movement Growing
  4. Miu Miu Brand Identity
  5. Groundbreaking Advertising Campaigns
  6. Women’s Tales 2012
  7. International Store Openings 
  8. Current Situation

The Beginning

In 1993 the brand, Miu Miu, is created as a womenswear line. Miuccia Prada, the designer, choose the nickname to bring the concept of femininity to the extreme. With a light, ironic style, and at times naive. The point of this brand for Miuccia is to offer a free expression zone.

Later, in 1994 Miu Miu launched their Men’s line. It is a contemporary take on Prada Men’s line. When the Prada brand is reaching the minimalist pinnacle, Miu Miu proposes an idea of naïve sophistication.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu First Fashion Show
First Fashion Show

The Inspiration: Miuccia Prada

Experienced by nature, Miu Miu empowers a sense of vivacity and youth, understood as a mental condition, not an ancestral one. As a designer, Miuccia Prada focuses on moods that affect styles. For her, it is always irrelevant to determine the material.

Convinced by the changing nature of fashion, Miuccia Prada manages to capture a sensual and glamorous restlessness that will soon become an indispensable part of the Miu Miu DNA.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Purse Details
Purse Details

Miuccia Prada focuses on a clientele that is particularly attentive to the new, unswerving, and sophisticated trends. Miu Miu expresses Miuccia Prada’s vision of an alternative style. Always characterized by a strong personality, completely independent of the Prada brand.

Turning fashion into a mental state and using change as a tool, Miuccia Prada has built a world around Miu Miu, a trademark and at the same time a new way of communicating.

The Movement Growing

Later, in 2002, Fabio Zambernardi, becomes the design director of both Prada and Miu Miu. Also, both brands combined a total of 160 direct sales outlets.

A year later, a boutique debuts in Tokyo, in the Shibuya district. Also, both Prada and Miu Miu enter a ten-year license agreement with Luxottica Group, a world leader in the optical industry, for the production and distribution of sunglasses and watches.

In 2005 the Miu Miu Men’s line is temporarily frozen. Later, after the trials of presenting the collections at the New York, London and Milan fashion weeks, Miu Miu finds its final and natural location in the fashion calendar of Paris in March 2006. By 2007, Miu Miu’s annual sales of womenswear had risen to $297 million, and as it grew in sophistication. Later, in 2008 the Miu Miu Men’s line is closed permanently.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu First Fashion Show in Paris 2006
First Fashion Show in Paris 2006

Miu Miu Brand Identity

Comparing with the fashion world in its undisputed capital, Miu Miu uses the magnificence of the Parisian scenery as the ideal stage for its experimental essence, combining the savoir-faire of Parisian couture with a rare and sophisticated elegance, never forgetting irony.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu a set up at the Palais D'Iéna
A set up at the Palais D’Iéna

Featuring a state-of-the-art spirit, Miu Miu blends in a constant cross-fading concept of indoors / outdoors, town / country, male / female, couture / street, past / future. The prints create excesses, breaks and counterpoint. Footwear, ironic and eccentric, are a focal point. The boundaries between high and low, trash and elegant are deliberately ignored.

The dialectic of the bourgeois style is then revised. The contrasts are ostentatious rather than hidden. Each piece is made with careful attention to detail. In this perfect frame insert strangeness, contradiction, and intentional errors. Arguing and exquisite finesse are the keys.

Groundbreaking Advertising Campaigns

Innovative advertising campaigns have marked a striking styling: initially shot in a neo-realistic style by Corinne Day and Ellen Von Unwerth, Miu Miu’s images soon developed their unmistakable uniqueness by choosing celebrities as a testimonial.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu Fall 2017 Advertising Campaign
Fall 2017 Advertising Campaign

Since the debut with Drew Barrymore in 1995, the cast has changed constantly and abstractness of narrative style has become a trademark: Kim Basinger, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Vanessa Paradis, Stacy Martin, Hailee Steinfeld, Chloë Sevigny, Amanda Seyfried, Elle Fanning just to make some names, they all participated in print campaigns, made with a cinematic style. The intention is always to define a vision of fluid and spontaneous femininity.

A volatile touch of nonchalance and a sense of senseless unreality persist as a fundamental note of the essence of Miu Miu, constantly changing and never equal to herself.

Women’s Tales 2012

Women’s Tales is an ongoing short film series for the female universe. Made by important international filmmakers with different intellectual formations express their vision of femininity.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu Carmen Chloë Sevigny's Film
Carmen Chloë Sevigny’s Film

It invited filmmakers to celebrate femininity in the 21st century, exploring it with a critical eye. This means embracing the infinite complexities and contradictions of women to reflect and excite them.

In the series of shorts, the Miu Miu collections play a prominent role, alongside famous actresses and models. The Miu Miu leaders act as a contrast to narrative drama. Power, desire. Vanity, refinement. Rites, rules. Dreams, nightmares. Even the smallest moment in a woman’s daily life contains many facets. Women’s Tales narrates these moments and emphasizes the fundamental, enriching role of clothing.

International Store Openings

Miu Miu opened its first boutique in China in the MIX in the city of Shenzhen in 2009. Later, Miu Miu expanded into the North American market. A store was launched in Houston, Texas, in The Galleria during the summer of 2011. Also, in Short Hills, New Jersey, in the fall of 2011. Miu Miu also opened their first Australian boutique at Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne. Then, a second opened at Westfield Sydney in 2011. A branch opened in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2010 and is situated in the Fraser’s department store.

On March 26, 2015 Miu Miu presents his new project with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The 720-square-meter building, located in Miyuki Street in the Aoyama district of Tokyo, is the heart of Japanese brand activities. The project is placed diagonally with respect to the famous Epicenter Prada, also designed by the Swiss study. Contrary to the fully glazed Prada building, the discreet Miu Miu metal facade looks dull and hotter. The typological model chosen by the architects is that of a box placed directly at the road level, with the lid slightly raised to mark the entrance and allow passers-by to look inside.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu Tokyo shop, Herzog & de Meuron Project
Tokyo shop, Herzog & de Meuron Project

Current Situation

In 2013 Miu Miu, along with Prada, created a collection of over 40 exclusive evening cocktail dresses for “The Great Gatsby”.

In August 2015, Miu Miu launched its first fragrance which captures the spirit of the brand. The surprising combination of lily of the valley and the Akigalawood, creating a feeling of natural and timeless in a contemporary way.

Mame Fashion Dictionary: Miu Miu The First Female Scent
The First Female Scent

Today, Miu Miu’s worldwide expansion strategy is based on occupying some of the world’s prime retail positions in cities including New York, London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Miu Miu’s global boutiques are the bricks and mortar embodiment of the experimental spirit of the brand. Continually evolving, the shops suggest a dramatic but playful attitude to shopping and dressing up.

 

 

Miu Miu generated €431 million in revenue in 2022, compared to €346 million in 2021 and €329 in 2020.

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