Just Vibing in Sparkly Underwear: Can You Feel The Agency from Miu Miu?
"If I were younger, I would go out in panties!" Miuccia Prada laughed after the FW23 show. The show, to everyone's surprise, did not feature their iconic ballet flats or rough-edged looks – Stylenotcom posted, "Miuccia is done with mini skirts." Instead, Miu Miu seems to have gone back to references from when it all started for the brand in the '90s and down to the early 2000s.
Miu Miu in the early decade of the 1990s pronounced a distinctive minimal style for the young schoolgirl with slip dresses, jean shorts and colour-blocked two-pieces. The FW94 campaign saw Rosemary Ferguson bare-chested in an unbuttoned jacket paired with underwear. A young Drew Barrymore modeled for the SS95 campaign in a bright red bra and panty. Then sheer entered the party and Kate Moss, infamous for wearing one of the most remembered sheer looks from the decade, walked down the SS95 runway in a casual chic blue-grey sheer top which looked like it had been worn a few times, with mildly unkempt hair.
The New York Times ran a piece last year about the growing popularity of the fashion trends of the '90s and early 2000s, which is reflected in young office goers now wearing crop tops to work. During the first (among the many) COVID lockdown, everyone had taken to wearing leisurewear all day, keeping video cameras off and having a messy bun after sleeping off one's frustrations for the nth time. The industry wondered if we would ever go back to the way we used to dress, and if not, what would these new codes be.
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Paola Antonelli, Curator at MoMA wondered if New Yorkers would go back to wearing stilettos in a session with students and Vogue considered hyped casual wear as the foreseeable future. The Guardian ran a series of articles where women reflected on how they made use of the lockdown to do away with uncomfortable underwear–like the bra. While wearing a bra at work was "expected" at work for Emma Roddick and not wearing one would invite judgment from colleagues, she wanted to visualise a space in the future where certain clothes, like bras are not a necessity. In the same article, Louise Kilburn vocalised her thoughts about the liberating feeling of wearing a bra in a manner that implied it was thrilling to her to be a little non-conforming to society's demands.
This begs the question, are we really ready to leave the comfort of the casualwear we have grown so used to in the past few years and seamlessly transform into dressing up for going out? Miu Miu's FW23 or Ways of Looking highlighted the "point of view as an act of intervention and invention" and somewhere as we gazed at the runway, we found ourselves linking our lives with Mia Goth when she walked down the steps of the Palais d’Iena. Her carefully disordered hair instantly took one back to Miu Miu in the 90’s – the casual chic and confident nonchalance. The floral printed dresses from SS97, now on sheer material with appliques, dark turtleneck sweaters paired with black underwear from the same collection or beige turtlenecks from their Spring Summer 2000 collection, now reflected in unicolour turtleneck sweaters and bejeweled underwear or the white floral printed beige underwear from SS96, now sheer green and interspersed with dark floral appliques, were all "familiar items of clothing". We've seen them before in the shows and in our homes. We've worn those glasses. But are we ready to introduce them to the world outside? Miu Miu challenged us as we encountered well-known items of clothing, while demanding a certain vulnerability from us. Along with a sigh of relief–as this is how we really see self-fashioning today.
“If you're not wearing something outside that you would also wear at home, you are definitely thinking about it.”
It's a bringing back of a specific kind of agency and nonchalance of the '90s Miu Miu, to a post-COVID world where people are giving less fucks about how others perceive their personal clothing choices, in a radical way. Furthermore, it is the eternal desire of young people (and even older) to be taken seriously while wearing something sexier, a little revealing, if not for being policed by moral codes and societal propriety. As children, one of the first things we learn as we venture outside is to always wear underwear and never to show it. Codes have changed significantly now. If you're not wearing something outside that you would also wear at home, you are definitely thinking about it. Moreover, there is a certain taking back of power in not following what you are meant to follow, looking unkempt and wearing nothing but a sweater and underwear, yet knowing you look damn good while doing so. As fashion critic, the Kimbino says, "What’s a pair of bejeweled undies and stockings to such a grim reality you know? Life isn’t that serious and so taking that approach with designing is fun and light and easy to consume."
Words: Upasana Das
