Hailee Steinfeld, Jennifer Lawrence, and Mila Kunis sat front-row at Miu Miu, but on the runway Miuccia Prada has moved on from last season's fascination with the cult of contemporary celebrity. Instead she offered a study of the forties, right down to the models' matte red lips and the combs holding back their hair. With its striking views of Le Tour d'Eiffel, architect Auguste Perret's 1937 Palais d'Iéna, which has never before been opened for a fashion show, proved a fitting backdrop for a modern vintage collection that transported us back to World War II-era Paris. (Marc Jacobs also touched on the era at Louis Vuitton today.)
Back then, of course, women would've worn stockings with their bold-shouldered, inverted-triangle jackets, or at the very least a pencil skirt. But here bare legs put the show's glitter-dipped sandal booties with their curving heels in sharp relief. Dresses were slim, long-sleeved, and to-the-knee and came printed with birds or white flowers like lilies of the valley and daisies. For evening, those same prints were picked out in sequins. Mink swagged the shoulders of little black dresses and, a bit more trickily, twisted around the hips of others. The models carried clutches that looked like blown-up versions of coin purses.
Afterward, someone observed that Prada looked like Miu Miu this season and vice versa. Suffice it to say that this was one of the designer's most elegant Miu Miu collections ever.
