SimplyAbuDhabi VII

1 6 0 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I MIUMIU TRACES A PLAYFUL STYLE-LINE IN TIME. N amed after Ms. Miuccia Prada, Prada Groups President and stylist, Miu Miu is all about the power of contradictions, surprises, conceptual short-circuits: the result is sensual as it is intellectual. Avant-garde, often provocative, never obvious, MiuMiu is characterized by a very strong identity and an independent creative development. Established in 1992, evoluted along the years, the MiuMiu alphabet has been put into acceleration when the label began showing in Paris. Stressing both couture savoir-faire and playful experimentalism, Miu Miu explores fashion with a capital F, giving elegance and sophistication a twisted meaning. Turning fashion into a state of mind, Miuccia Prada has built a world around Miu Miu. As the fruit of an individual and experimental mind, its evolution is full of ruptures, diversions, about-turns. The start was naïve, almost anti-fashion. Early on, Miuccia Prada worked with contrarieties: using materials that looked synthetic, for instance, or forms that had a thrift store flavor. Her approach, however, has never been grungy: quirky, instead. TheMiuMiu vernacular was established soon; an on-going and ever-expanding series of themes recurs through the years, creating coherence in diversity. The semiotics of fashion are constantly turned around: outerwear looks like underwear, for instance; sport elements are placed out of context; a taste for the unfinished and raw is just as important as an appreciation of couture; notions of good and bad taste, of ugly and beautiful are deliberately mismatched; innocence adds nuance. In a constant play between past and present, the bourgeois code is often dismantled and re-assembled; prints work as rupture, stretching frompainterly to country to abstract and even slightly hippie yet contemporary. It is all about the power of contradictions, surprises, conceptual short- circuits: the result is sensual as it is intellectual. Perfected along the years, the Miu Miu alphabet has been put into acceleration when the label began showing in Paris. Stressing both couture savoir-faire and playful experimentalism, Miu Miu explores fashion with a capital F, giving elegance and sophistication a twisted meaning; meanwhile sport nods, naughty inspirations, riffs of the masculine and the feminine, prints, couture and even bourgeoisie all come together. The sum of the parts, however, is not plain; on the contrary, askew, challenging, never obvious.