Miuccia Prada imagines a voyage through the mountains with the Miu Miu Fall 2021 RTW runway show in the snow, exploring the landscape of Cortina d’Ampezzo, in the heart of Dolomites Alps.

As a fashion show in the snow is incongruous, so garments can challenge perception and context. Outfits combine different intentions, different dreams and realities, to create different characters. Inside and outside, protective and seductive, – intentions are multiple, like the diverse identities found within each woman. And, in turn, each individual is attracted to liked-minded personas, the single becoming the collective.

In a pretence of practicality, the language of sportswear fuses with fashion. Using the vernacular of mountaineering dress, they make gestures to the landscape. Teddy-bear faux fur, padded layers and knit ski helmets and ski masks frame faces, suggesting warmth and safety, beautifying necessary means of protection for a hazardous terrain. Silk satin dresses and lace convey delicacy and intimacy.

There are inherent tensions when these languages are combined – a dreamlike state, when the practical is romanced through exaggeration, when the fragile can be reinvented to become brave. The utilitarian can become beautiful and pleasurable; the decorative can suddenly have reason, new purpose. Padded sportswear borrows its satin and pastel colors from fantasies of lingerie, slip dresses are executed in heavy wools, studded with metal like imaginary armor.

Enter the backstage of the Miu Miu Mountain Club​: a voyage through the mountains, exploring the landscape, on a quest heading towards an unknown goal.