Another brand that made its Salone del Mobile debut this season was Miu Miu. In a clever twist on the format of major sister brand Prada, they unveiled the Miu Miu Literary Club, a two-day program of panels and talks highlighting the work of some overlooked female authors. The venue couldn’t have been more Miu Miu if it tried: A few blocks from the Duomo, the event took place at the Circolo Filologico Milanese, a 19th-century library and cultural club straight out of a Wes Anderson film. At the lecture I attended, curator and writer Lou Stoppard moderated a fascinating and genuinely moving panel with multi-award winning authors Jhumpa Lahiri, Sheila Heti and Claudia Durastanti, discussing Alba De Céspedes’ groundbreaking neorealist novel. Forbidden notebook, which attracted a new audience after it was republished last year by Pushkin Press for the first time in 70 years.
During their wide-ranging conversation – during which Lahiri proudly presented a dog-eared paperback copy of one of De Céspedes’ novels that she discovered during her regular Sunday strolls through her local Roman market in Porta Portese, complete with a wonderfully cheesy retro cover – It trio discussed everything from journaling to motherhood, to the paradox of male writers from Dante to Proust who put their inner emotional worlds on the page and are celebrated for it, while women who work in a similar way are sidelined as ‘denominational’ writers. The assembled group of listeners – including Zawe Ashton, Poppy Delevingne and Ella Richards, all decked out in head-to-toe Miu Miu – were captivated, and when it came time to end the conversation, you could have heard a pin drop. . (Until the room quickly erupted into applause.) Then guests chatted over canapes and spritzes in the charming book-lined lounge area, with many already beginning to leaf through the provided copies of their book. Forbidden notebook. It was a brilliantly executed new facet of Miu Miu’s tradition of championing female creatives – see them Women’s stories film program as another example – and an unexpected highlight of Milan Design Week. —LH
