A massive whoop went up at the beginning of the Miu Miu show. It emanated from the direction of a bench containing those two miscreants, Marc Jacobs and Gwendoline Christie, who were cheering and clapping Elle Fanning on her maiden voyage around a runway. Fanning was sporting a high quiff, flicky eyeliner, a tan ’60s overcoat, blue chiffon neckerchief, and a pair of low, buckled bootees. Lots of other characters followed—a hard suburban girl gang who stomped around wearing their deliberately badly teased beehives and shaved heads with conviction. Miuccia Prada loves an excuse to throw Miu Miu back to the ’50s and ’60s, but this time she said she was less interested in explaining the theoretical whys and wherefores than in portraying “personalities, different people, and to be diverse, not just in terms of race, but of being big or little.”
They were certainly a cast of characters—the likes of Slick Woods, Edie Campbell, Adwoa Aboah, Georgia Jagger, Lily McMenamy, and Kaia Gerber. They were wearing clothes which soon began ringing bells among members of the audience who’ve seen Karlheinz Weinberger: Swiss Rebels, the influential work of the man who photographed a real subcult of extreme teen Elvis-mad rockers and greasers in the ’50s and ’60s. The doubled, buckled belts, the chain necklaces, mohair sweaters, and hairdos were liftoff points for a collection that had fun with bleached denim and a whole series of exaggerated dogtooth tweed and cheesy pastel leather jackets and coats.
For evening, the show majored in strapless brocade below-the-knee pencil dresses, like the sort of vintage rarities girls would fight over at the flea market. No need to now: The whole wardrobe, from fringed scarves to pointy low ankle boots, will be there at Miu Miu come fall.