Editor’s Note: We’re continuing our tradition of expanding the Vogue Runway archive by digitizing collections originally shot on film, with a quartet of shows from Miu Miu, which had back-to-back hits in 2023 with the pantless look and the neo-prep polo looks . This spring 1998 collection was originally presented in Milan in October 1997.
The origins of Miu Miu’s Spring 1998 collection were told in 1995 Fashion profile of Miuccia Prada. One day, the magazine reported, the designer, her husband Patrizio Bertelli and the team were “reminiscing about the hippie clothes Miuccia wore in the 1970s and how fun it would be to wear them now, when someone suggested producing them in the 1970s. -house. Two months later, Miuccia had created a complete collection of fringed suede shoulder bags, gauzy ruffled dresses, deerskin maxi skirts and rawhide moccasins.
This context seems particularly relevant because the show opened with a laced corset top that seemed to reference an iconic Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche design from 1977. The Frenchman showed it in the context of a boho reverie of full, flowing skirts. Prada tapped into the Left Bank vibe and took it in an imaginative, yet more utilitarian direction. The Miu Miu bustier was paired with button-front cropped sailor-style trousers in a summer camp palette of khaki and blue.
Boy Scout belts and waist pockets made of pony leather, interrupted lingerie dresses with applications with childish shapes of cherries, hearts, ducks, reindeer and hands. There was also a cross stitch print of an ice cream cone. This delight was followed by a group of candy-colored cotton looks, some with rick-rack trim, in maraschino red, blueberry and licorice, along with a group of black looks with metallic ‘sprinkles’. For the finale there were satin ensembles in jewel tones, some with a pouffe on the sleeve or skirt, others with half aprons. The signature Miu Miu product lived up to the brand’s mission through and through Fashionto capture ‘the truly eccentric side of Miuccia’.
