Photos – courtesy of Steven Meisel, MIU MIU ©
An ode to colour, femininity, and fashion – Miu Miu celebrates its signature matelassé in a new campaign, photographed by Steven Meisel and starring Gigi Hadid as a modern reflection of the Miu Miu persona, featuring the iconic Wander and Arcadie bags.
Continuing its tradition of championing historic female creatives, Miu Miu draws inspiration from the stylized work of pioneering British interwar photographer Yevonde. A feminist and suffragette, Yevonde’s career symbolizes freedom and independence. She opened her studio at just 21, when professional opportunities for women were scarce, signing her work with only her first name to assert both her personal authorship and identity as a woman.
Yevonde’s work from the 1930s is groundbreaking for its use of delicately nuanced and considered colour, creating surreally perfect arrangements of models and high society elites within utopian scenes of unreal props, drapery, and foliage. This campaign respectfully pays homage to those images, capturing similar composure and saturated hues set against porcelain-delicate dégradé pastels, yet infused with the spontaneous spirit of the present.
The campaign extols Yevonde’s hallmark fractured colour tones in instinctive and joyful contrasts, an idea echoed through the new colourways of the Arcadie and Wander bags, where classic caramel and cognac hues are joined by bright orange and soleil. The contemplative poise of each image – fallen petals, a carefully gestured hand, bags hugged, cradled, held – evokes that bygone age, yet Meisel’s images are injected with the bold attitudes of today.
Gigi Hadid, straddling the line between fashion model and cultural icon, perfectly embodies this reawakening of past lives and timeless tribute to pure beauty.
Photography: Steven Meisel
Creative direction: Edward Quarmby
Styling: Lotta Volkova
Cast: Gigi Hadid
