A point of view as an act of intervention, and invention. The Fall/Winter 2023 Miu Miu collection by Miuccia Prada is focused on the instinctive process of looking, ways of seeing, and how an act of observation can in turn transform the object of its focus. Looking is a window to thinking.
Although agency is placed on the observer, design is not passive. Workmanship is a tool to transform perception: proportions are altered through design and cut, shapes exaggerated, fabrics layered and fused to affect the rapport of garments with the body. Technique and materialization can actively change how outfits are visually read, and how we understand them.
Through examination and study, clothes are shifted both in structure and their placement on the body. Familiar items of clothing – twinsets, knee-length skirts, hooded sweatshirts – move around the figure, afforded different strengths and fragilities through their fabrication. The idea of looking influences notions of the underneath and outer, transparent chiffon opening windows onto clothes normally hidden, stockings exposed, dresses are overlaid. The complexity of layered clothes necessitates closer appraisal, an inquisitive mind, curiosity.
In the Palais d’Iena, models walk on a sequence of raised walkways to aid our observation. Alongside is an installation by South Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong whose performance-based pieces, centered around her body alone, demand an audience. Screens featuring Jeong’s specially-conceived work – examining the relationship between her own body and clothing – form punctuation to the space, inviting and arresting our attention, demanding to be watched.
Presented with a variety of possibilities, we are obliged to think. The character cast included Mia Goth opening the show, with Rick Braukis, Ethel Cain, Noen Eubanks, Amelia Grey, Sam Nivola, Mame Bineta Sane, Zaya Wade and Emma Corrin who closed the show.
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