Miu Miu Women’s Tales #21: fashion and art in a feminist conversation

Miuccia Prada is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Miu Miu Women’s Tales, a creative project that champions female directors, with the series’ #21 short film, Shangri-la.

The Italian head designer at Prada and founder of Miu Miu explained the concept behind this project. “It is to open a conversation about the role of fashion in contemporary society. But also that of physical appearance and femininity and vanity more broadly.” With Women’s Tales #21, Miu Miu keeps building a community of like-minded young women seeking their place in society.

Some of the best female directors of our time accepted to be part of this series, and they have narrated in an original way the beauty, the complexity, and the several and imponderable aspects of the human being.

Miu Miu at 2020 Venice Film Festival.

Miu Miu, more than a fashion brand

Through this project, Miu Miu is becoming more than a fashion brand. The luxury fashion house is evolving into a cultural hub, a gathering of powerful voices for women. Consequently, Miu Miu is cementing a long-term relationship with the brand’s customers and audiences around the world. In fact, long before the pandemic and digital Fashion Weeks, Miuccia Prada had already realized the potential of short films to engage creatively and communicate with young consumers.

Each season, Miu Miu releases a short film simultaneously with a new collection. Miuccia Prada gives the filmmakers total freedom to tell their transformation journeys and personal growth tales the way they wish. The only condition is that they incorporate Miu Miu’s seasonal collections as costumes in the films. But contrary to a fashion add, the clothes blend in smoothly with the stories and characters.

Before Women’s Tale #21, other filmmakers worldwide have already shared their views thanks to Miu Miu. For example, the French Agnès Varda and Mati Diop, the American Ava DuVernay, and the Argentinian Lucrecia Martel. Likewise, the Japanese Naomi Kawase, the Scottish Lynne Ramsay, and the Palestinian Hiam Abbass have also told their stories. Many of these films star famous actresses like Chlöe Sevigny and Dakota Fanning.

Every time a woman makes a film, it is a political act, in my view, whether we mean it to be or not. Films by women – whether comedy or drama, documentary or narrative – illustrate the human experience through a women’s voice, through a women’s eyes, through a woman’s creativity. Experiences which are often marginalized, fabricated, or simply ignored.

Ava DuVernay.

About Miu Miu Women’s Tales #21, Shangri-la

Isabel Sandoval is a Filipino actress, screenwriter and film-maker living in New York. She directed Shangri-la, the short film #21 in Miu Miu Women’s Tale series. Sandoval has already written, produced and directed three much-acclaimed movies. She’s won awards like the Audience Award at the 2013 Deauville Asian Film Festival in France.

The movie’s title is a reference to the tale of an earthly Eden. Many Asian immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century, thought America to be their Shangri-la. But they faced, instead, a harsh reality. Sandoval’s movie turns this reality into an optimistic portrait of freedom. Miu Miu Women’s Tale #21 happens in a church confessional. There, a Filipino woman talks every week to a priest. She imagines various alternate lives when she can be treated as an equal, dressed in modern fashion. It is a portrait of freedom and liberation, starring Isabel Sandoval e Matthew Fifer.

The Women’s Tale #21, Shangri-la, premieres digitally on the 23rd of February 2021 on miumiu.com and Miu Miu IGTV at 5 pm CET.

While you wait, watch the highlights of one of Miu Miu Women’s Tales’ presentation at the 76th Venice Film Festival.

Photo by Brigitte Lacombe, courtesy of Miu Miu