With the opening of their new Tokyo store, we look at some of the women that define the Miu Miu brand
Last week, Miu Miu unveiled their new collaboration with architects Herzog & de Meuron: a huge new store in the heart of Tokyo's Aoyama District. Opened with a fashion show and party attended by women including Miroslava Duma and Stacy Martin, the guestlist reminded us why we want to be one of Miu Miu's women: not only because they look great in a sixties-print minidress, but because they all have something interesting to say. As Imogen Poots told WWD following the A/W15 show, Miu Miu "always manages to bring together people that share a common outlook on life. Everyone always wants to talk to each other.”
It is this atmosphere that seems to define the Miu Miu brand; from 2012's The Miu Miu, a female-only pop-up member's club that appeared in various glitzy venues around the world, to their ongoing short film series Women's Tales which features women like Miranda July, they encourage and celebrate the voice and creativity of a diverse range of women. We look over some of the women who Mrs. Prada chooses to define the Miu Miu brand by their inclusion in campaigns, collaborations and seating arrangements alike.
Miranda July
A brand that is often interested in the relationship between tech and fashion (in an chic way, rather than the clunky misuse that so often abounds), Miu Miu collaborated with director and performance artist Miranda July not only to create a short film for their Women's Tales, but also to design and offer an app called Somebody to accompany it. As she told AnOther Magazine, "The film’s idea was directly linked to the app, so it’s about all these different kinds of people using Somebody for their own purposes."
Léa Seydoux
With a regular position on the front row of Miu Miu's runway shows, Léa Seydoux has also featured as the face of Prada's perfume Candy. Her ability to shift from award-winning leading lady in Blue Is The Warmest Colour to campaign model to Bond girl (she has just filmed an incarnation of the role that she describes in the new issue of AnOther Magazine as a "tougher, and more sensitive... a modern woman") shows the adaptability of the Miu Miu woman; able to sell a perfume, point a gun and play a blue-haired art-school lesbian.
Natalie Westling
18-year-old Arizona-born Natalie Westling was the star of the Croisière 2015 campaign shot by Jamie Hawkesworth – but there is something more bizarrely charming about her than her sheer photogenicism. She's proudly vocal about her enthusiasm for skateboarding and passion for LGBT rights and, when asked by Dazed who she would put at the top of their Dazed 100 list, said: "Christa McAuliffe. The first astronaut to match her eyeshadow to her NASA suit." We assume Mrs. Prada would approve.
Alice Rohrwacher
Italian screenwriter and director Alice Rohrwacher is responsible for creating De Djess, the most recent of Miu Miu's Women's Tales. A series of short films "by women who critically celebrate femininity in the 21st century," Rohrwacher's on-screen personification of a Miu Miu dress with a "taste for women’s beauty that is less obvious and more ingenious" is perhaps the epitome of the brand's aesthetic.
Imogen Poots
One of the brand's three S/S15 campaign stars, Imogen Poots epitomises the type of emerging actress that Mrs. Prada favours for the brand: young, gifted and relatively unknown. It is through finding and including new talents like S/S15's Imogen, Marine Vacth and Mia Goth into the Miu Miu folds (alongside mega-stars like Lupita Nyong'o and Lindsey Wixson) that sets the brand apart when it comes to campaigns – and their privileging of talent over column inches that consolidates its independent spirit.
