Miu Miu has moved on from the schoolgirl

For Spring/Summer 2027, Miuccia Prada is reconsidering the wardrobe she made everyone want to copy

There comes a peculiar moment in fashion when a designer's most original ideas become so successful that they begin to look entirely ordinary. Miu Miu knows this predicament better than most. The pleated micro-mini, the exposed waistband, the prim cardigan and the slightly dishevelled schoolgirl became some of the most recognizable fashion codes of the decade. They were copied by high-street retailers, dissected on social media and absorbed into wardrobes far beyond the house's own customers. Eventually, the Miu Miu look became so familiar that almost everyone knew how to reproduce it.

For Spring/Summer 2027, Miuccia Prada appears interested in what happens next. Her collection, titled Here and Now, revisited the clothes women actually wear, but with a different emphasis. Running shoes, sports bras, track pants and vintage denim collided with checked tailoring, embellished eveningwear and skirts that had travelled considerably farther down the leg than the micro-mini that helped make the label famous.

The collection wasn't a complete rejection of Miu Miu's recent identity. The recognizable codes were still present, including low waists, pleats, awkward proportions and an affection for clothes that seem to have been assembled without consulting the usual rules of good taste. But the overall effect felt less like a girl experimenting with her school uniform and more like a woman negotiating several different versions of herself throughout the day.

A new uniform for a less orderly wardrobe

Prada described the collection as an attempt to introduce beauty and refinement into ordinary contemporary clothing. Sportswear was central to that exercise, although the results were considerably more interesting than the familiar proposition of pairing sneakers with something expensive.

Checked blazers appeared alongside lace-up athletic shorts, embellished bras were layered with performance garments, and evening dresses acquired the unexpected company of rugby shirts and running shoes. Pleated skirts returned in longer proportions, while the collaboration with New Balance introduced the lightweight RC150 racing sneaker into a wardrobe otherwise occupied by tailoring, satin and decorative embellishment.

What made the combinations compelling was their refusal to disguise the origins of the individual garments. A sports bra still looked like a sports bra, and a running shoe retained its unmistakably practical purpose. Prada wasn't attempting to transform athletic clothing into conventional luxury. She was questioning why elegance should require us to abandon the clothes that have become essential to everyday life.

The Wrangler collaboration extended that thinking into denim. Vintage jeans were reworked with crossed lacing, a detail repeated across skirts, dresses and shoes. Rather than treating old denim as something to be perfected, the collection preserved its lived-in character while introducing a new construction language.

Miu Miu would like you to stop ironing your clothes

Perhaps the most enjoyable development was the collection's attitude toward perfection. Suede was waxed to create cracked, aged surfaces, while cocktail dresses appeared deliberately creased and crushed. Even the most decorative pieces seemed to have experienced something between the dressing room and the runway.

There is a particular kind of luxury in making an expensive dress look as though it has been pulled from the bottom of a suitcase, although it is also a deliciously absurd proposition. The carefully manufactured crease is hardly an invitation to neglect one's wardrobe. It is a reminder that fashion can find beauty in surfaces that don't look immaculate, and that sophistication needn't always announce itself through pristine finishing.

These imperfections also gave the collection a sense of physical life. The clothes suggested movement, wear and the possibility of being inhabited rather than simply photographed. In an industry increasingly adept at producing flawless images, Prada seemed interested in the evidence that somebody had actually worn the garments.

The difficulty of being Miu Miu

There is, however, a legitimate question about how much of this represents genuine change. Miu Miu has mixed sportswear, tailoring and deliberately awkward styling for years. The exposed bra, the pleated skirt and the unlikely footwear combination are hardly unfamiliar territory. Some of the collection's strongest ideas were refinements of an established vocabulary rather than entirely new propositions.

That doesn't necessarily diminish their value, but it complicates the idea of a reinvention. When a house becomes extraordinarily influential, even its experiments can begin to resemble recognizable signatures. Miu Miu's challenge is no longer persuading the fashion world to appreciate an unusual combination. It is finding ways to make those combinations interesting after the fashion world has learned to expect them.

The shift in proportion may ultimately prove more consequential than any individual styling trick. Longer skirts, relaxed athletic shapes and the emphasis on clothes with practical origins suggest a wardrobe less dependent on the youthful provocation that made the micro-mini such a phenomenon. The Miu Miu woman hasn't suddenly become conventional or grown out of her eccentricities. She simply has more places to go than the classroom.

And perhaps that is the most persuasive reading of Here and Now. Prada isn't abandoning the visual language that made Miu Miu so culturally powerful. She's allowing it to accommodate different bodies, different routines and different ideas of elegance.

The schoolgirl helped make Miu Miu a phenomenon. Spring/Summer 2027 suggests that she doesn't have to remain one forever.