With rumors of Raf Simons’ potential arrival at Miu Miu taking the internet by storm, @samutaro looks back on the label's menswear line that was retired in 2008.
The Prada Group has given no comment on the rumors, but the idea of Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada coming together isn’t too far fetched; the pair are longtime friends and share a mutual appreciation for one another’s work. It's also important to remember that Simons previously worked at the Prada Group when he was creative director at Jil Sander between 2005 and 2012. His tenure was widely lauded and he gave the house some of its most iconic designs in recent times. Had it not been for Sander’s return, then surely Simons would have gone on to build an even more impressive legacy.
The Prada Group bringing in Simons makes a lot of sense; his modern, minimalistic aesthetic and couture sensibilities would, ostensibly, be a good fit for Miu Miu. But more importantly, the Belgian's cult male following for his own brand could be levied to reboot its often forgotten menswear line, which ran from 1999 through 2008.
If that was before your time or you simply need a refresher on what the line was all about, scroll below.
The Miu Miu Men's Debut
The original Miu Miu women’s line made its debut in 1992 (three years after Prada), but the label's menswear line didn’t debut until 1999. A Spring/Summer presentation marked the first showcase, but the collection was essentially a menswear capsule of the womenswear. It wasn’t until FW99 that the menswear line was given its first standalone showcase on the runway, which would lay out the foundations of what the line would become. The collection was defined by its relaxed tailoring, and featured functional utility belts and ugly shoes — items that have become covetable classics today.
So why was the Miu Miu menswear line introduced? Up until the late '90s, Prada had established itself as the uniform of the fashion elite. The New York Times editor Constance C.R. White described the label as a “private club whose members dress in expensive stark, black uniforms and whose insignia is a discreet black and silver triangular badge adorning futuristic nylon bags” in an article penned in 1999.
During that same year, Prada made a push into the U.S. market with the opening of a new Fifth Avenue store. This dovetailed with a downward expansion via its subsidiary lines of Prada Sport and Miu Miu, which were both created to reach a wider audience than what Prada was used to, all the while maintaining the house's cachet.
“A wider group of people, and even more young people, are increasingly understanding design in clothing,” Miuccia told the New York Times in 1998 when asked why she wanted to create the menswear diffusion line. Her husband and chairman of the brand, Patrizio Bertelli, echoed the same sentiment, saying: “We’re not elitist. We like sophisticated things in fashion and in art, but that's why we like young people, because they are the ones that bring up new ideas.” This democratic approach priced clothes in the Miu Miu and Prada Sport collections at 45 percent to 50 percent less than the Prada mainline.
The House Codes
Miu Miu’s men’s collections are a far cry from the attention-grabbing styles found on runways and the e-commerce sites of today. Look through the image archives of their shows and there are no logos or Insta-friendly prints. Instead, the collections — mainly built around tailoring — had an oppressively ordinary attitude to them.
“Sometimes it makes me quite angry that I have to be so banal,” Miuccia explained to Frankel about her approach to design. But for the discerning menswear enthusiast, of which there was a growing number during the era, there was beauty to be found in the banal.
At close inspection, subversive design flourishes could be uncovered. Pieces like the FW02 nylon suits featured MA-1 bomber jacket detailing that riffed off cues from Prada men’s collections, while the FW05 show took the staples of male dressing (duffle coats, leather jackets, tailored overcoats) and belted them at the waist to achieve a subtle, off-beat sense of femininity.
While Miu Miu men's was often bracketed with Marni in terms of aesthetic — both sharing a boyish look — others felt it was a more youthful and irreverent twist on the main Prada line.
It wasn’t merely about tailoring, though. There were many obscure highlights throughout the lifespan of the label, including Mrs. Prada’s nod to stoners for SS05, which featured a line-up of psychedelic patterns and mushroom prints. One statement item which Prada archive fans might recognize was a sweater featuring a banana motif — a piece that came long before Prada’s SS11 collection turned it into a signature.
The Campaigns
If you’re a fan of the brand and have dug through the archives or are old enough to have seen them in glossies the first time around, then you’ll know that the Miu Miu men’s advertising campaigns were unique in their identity and message compared to other advertising of the time.
Hedi Slimane was busy ushering in a new era of male archetypes at Dior Homme, with his army of young, gaunt androgynous models, while mass media remained obsessed with the hunks-in-trunks virility that was apparent throughout most mid-’00s fashion. But at Miu Miu, the models were neither boys nor beefcakes.
The long list of photographers that shot the ads for the line included Willy Vanderperre (who held a five-season streak of campaigns), Prada collaborator Steven Meisel, as well as Mert & Marcus, Horst Diekgerdes, and Norbert Schoerner. Each of these iconic names contributed to a decade of stunning imagery that perfectly reflected the brand's minimal and futuristic vision.
Fans will remember many of the incredible backdrops — the tropical greenhouse for SS99 comes to mind — while AW99 projected a sleek city style via a glass-floored skyscraper. Some studio settings played on the label's concept of retro-futurism, with models falling into pools.
Why It Could Be a Good Time for Miu Miu Men's Revival
While Miu Miu men's wasn't commercially successful enough to survive, the menswear environment is now in a much stronger, healthier place. Couple that with the growing appetite for tailoring — which recent FW20 runways proved — and it would seem an appropriate time to revive the iconic line.
Dazed assistant editor Dominic Cadogan believes there’s a gap in the industry for it. In a 2018 piece reflecting on a decade since the brand's closure, he noted that “with contemporary menswear catering to one of three groups — streetwear, traditional tailoring, or those sticking a middle finger up at both — there isn’t a brand epitomizing all of the qualities of Miu Miu menswear: youthful but refined, playful but considered, and ultimately very chic.”
Designers like Kim Jones, Virgil Abloh, and Matthew Williams have proven that Miu Miu's menswear codes are relevant right now. The harnesses that Abloh has sent down the past four Louis Vuitton runways and Williams’ penchant for utility-infused suiting most certainly hark at the subverted tailoring seen in Miu Miu’s defining collections. If Abloh’s hybrid harnesses and Williams' chest rigs bags are the it-items today, Miuccia Prada’s belt strap bags are the zenith of the trend.
It's also worth noting that the growing shift away from logomania towards quieter and considered design serves as a reminder of Miu Miu’s vision that fashion doesn’t have to sound at foghorn levels to be relevant, interesting, or worthy of attention. As Rob Nowill highlighted in his feature piece "Why I Miss Miu Miu Menswear Now More Than Ever" on Anotherman, “Miu Miu menswear wasn’t the loudest voice in the room. It was pitched at a lower key. And it was just good clothes.”
Despite its decade in dormancy, Mrs. P’s considered Miu Miu men's garments haven’t lost their appeal, either. They might not have achieved "grail" status in the same sense of Simons' archive pieces, but look at resell platforms and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any of the brand's standout pieces like the SS05 embellished graphic face shirts or mushroom-print sweaters. While we can only hope that maybe Miuccia Prada will answer our menswear prayers and revive the line out of obsoletion, there is no certainty that it will happen anytime soon. If there is anyone who could do it justice, though, it would most certainly be Raf Simons.
