Editor’s Note: We continue 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 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 was related in a 1995 Vogue profile of Miuccia Prada. One day, reported the magazine, the designer, her husband Patrizio Bertelli, and the team “were sitting around reminiscing about the hippie clothes Miuccia wore in the 1970s and how much fun it would be to wear them now, when someone suggested producing them in-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 nod to an iconic Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche design of 1977. The Frenchman showed it in the context of a boho reverie of full, swirling skirts. Prada latched on to the Left Bank vibe and took it in an imaginative, yet more utilitarian direction. Miu Miu’s bustier was paired with sailor-style button-front cropped pants in a summer-camp palette of khakis and blues.
Boy Scout belts and ponyskin waist pouches punctuated lingerie dresses appliquéd with child-like shapes of cherries, hearts, ducks, reindeer, and hands. There was also a cross stitch print of an ice cream cone. This deliciousness 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 featuring metallic “sprinkles.” For the finale there were satin ensembles in jewel tones, some with a bit of pouf at the sleeve or the skirt, others with half aprons. Signature Miu Miu through-and-through, it fulfilled the brand’s mission, said Vogue, of capturing “the truly eccentric side of Miuccia.”
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