By Ella Sebok
Edited by Leah Gilbert
As September draws its last breath, and with it the ending of the Spring/Summer 2024 fashion month, I find myself without a new runway show to awe at or a new piece to add to my pinterest board. But this allows fashion moments of the past to break through the hustle and bustle of fashion month and grasp my attention. Already, I have a historical fashion moment from the Fall/Winter 2023 season to lust after, analyze, and maybe even scrutinize: Miu Miu’s $5,600 panties.
How could such a necessary and basic garment cost more than rent? Miu Miu, a brand that prides itself on its absurdist approach, debuted these golden embroidered panties in May of 2023 during their Fall/Winter 2023 fashion show. Actress Emma Corrin swapped out the royal tweed of The Crown for a pantless look, complete with a muted beige sweater, messy hair, a black matelassé handbag held awkwardly at her hip, and sheer brown tights layered under the showstopping golden panties. The runway moment captured the collections’ discourse between casualness and opulence and became one of the season’s viral looks.
Miu Miu’s inspiration for the underwear comes at the heels of the pandemic, when quarantining in our underwear all day blurred the lines between when and where we do and do not don our undies. Of course, celebrities such as Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner introduced the trend of underwear as street style on the streets of New York City. Hadid casually stepped out to grab a $1 slice in a now famous look complete with a slick black bun, a cute moto jacket, platform uggs and the headlining white bloomers. Kendall Jenner added an aura of luxury to the look, pairing her black underwear with slick black tights and a black sweater, adding a business casual feel to the outfit. Underwear became the newest high fashion accessory, transcending its traditional purpose, and taking on the role of the focal point of an outfit.
Obviously, Miu Miu’s gesture is absurd; to even suggest someone to spend $5,600 on underwear is an outrageously bold idea. It has onlookers in the comments of a @diet_prada post, with a magnifying glass and a puff of a cigarette, claiming the label of underwear to be fraudulent, and puzzling at its nature as a true piece of outerwear. The piece commands attention, with its reflective gold embroidery and cheeky cut, it is an extreme example of modern couture fashion and its inherent nonsensical nature.
The golden panties, impossible to comfortably wear and unthinkable for even the average Miu Miu consumer to pull-off, must then, be in the collection as a piece of extreme fashion, if not for practicality’s sake. They stand as a piece of art, canvased on the model to reflect the theme of the collection and its view on society. Founder and head designer of Miu Miu, Miuccia Prada’s vision for the Fall/Winter 2023 show was to showcase, as she details in the show description, the“instinctive process of looking, ways of seeing, and how an act of observation can, in turn, transform the object of its focus.” The golden panties are the perfect closing piece, the culmination of augmenting and innovating our viewing experience. They take in their stride the lifeblood of absurdist fashion and how it exists in the new digital age. Not only do they act as a redefinition of underwear itself, but a redefinition of the viral fashion moment itself.
The pair of underwear is modeled as outerwear, changing the viewing experience and the relation of the garment to the outside. Historically underwear has been confined to underneath garments and has never been the focus, especially for women, in fashion. Corsets and bloomers existed only to enhance women’s shape. Eventually, as the trend cycle progressed and morphed to suit society’s standards, underwear graced our vision while remaining an object of the underneath.Victoria Secret and popular lingerie brands alike sexualized the absence of outerwear, but the transformation of the underwear itself had yet to be seen. Miu Miu’s underwear, however, is not lingerie, rather, it has evolved into a casual accessory, no longer marketed for the on-looker, but for the wearer.
In the context of the contemporary obsession with demystifying underwear, Miu Miu’s walking disco ball shifts the focus from the sexual connotations held by the garment to its potential for virality. Without sexualization, the underwear becomes just another piece of a really expensive outfit. The golden panties toe the line of, as fashion historian Valeire Steele puts it, “hinting at what’s hidden” but not making the ‘quest to uncover’ the purpose. They don’t exist for the gaze of the male eye. They serve instead the wearer. It’s great to see the fashion industry in an era where extreme fashion can break out of its niche and reflect the absurdity in everyday clothing that pushes the boundaries of gender norms.
All of these qualities are the marker for a piece of absurdist fashion, but there is something that sets it apart from other absurdist moments. The $5,600 price tag, not the look itself, is the center of the piece’s virality, mostly due to its internet presence. Online discussion has branded the underwear’s opulence to be unreasonable. $5,600 of silk, wool, and sequins can’t possibly be worth it just to make a provocative point! Critics say that the fashion industry–as marked by these panties–has been ruined by a drive to go viral, that the price of the panties serves as a front for the price of fame.
In today’s era, when the lights dim and the runaway show starts, smartphones take the spotlight. Many brands and collections have struggled or failed in their attempts to curate a viral moment. Clothes that take 30 minutes to plaster on a model and can be worn for barely the length of the show itself are at the forefront of these attempts for their ability to stay relevant for a whole season, or, hopefully, a lifetime. Luckily for Miu Miu, the online discourse of their outrageous pricing facilitated that sought after longevity.
Some say the $5,600 price tag takes away from the artistic purpose absurdist fashion has historically possessed. An overarching interest with a moment in the spotlight takes away the ironic ‘anti-fashion’ essense Miu Miu’s extreme garments generally have, and generates an unwearable piece of excessive luxury for a viral moment.
Absurdist fashion has been co-opted by this cycle of viral moments. What spawned from artistic tributes to subcultures that challenged societal norms, is now a mode to secure the biggest moment of fashion month and boost sales. But this change isn’t necessarily bad. It marks a shift from the innovation being purely in new design technique and inventive fabrics, to the usage of technology and the internet blended with fashion. Fashion mirrors life, and in this moment life is concerned with virality and extreme opulence. Miu Miu took that obsession and satirized it.
The performance is not only limited to the clothes. New technology and internet accessibility has led to an extended longevity of the runway that defines the new era of fashion. In September 2022, Copenri spray painted its final look onto Bella Hadid to create the most viral moment of that fashion month and in 2016 Iris van Herpen displayed her 3D printed rib cage dress in a stunning unification of fashion and tech. Brands have recognized the longevity of their pieces in the digital age. In their Spring/Summer 2020 show Versace had Jennifer Lopez close with an updated version of her iconic plunging, green, fern printed Versace dress that she wore to the 2000 Grammys. The demand to search for this red carpet moment was so high, Google created Google Images to support the craze. By bringing Lopez and the dress back to the spotlight, Versace recognizes the timelessness the internet infused into this look. Each of these marriages of fashion with technology reflect the digital age of our society and push fashion boundaries in a new way.
The Miu Miu’s panties are part of the technology’s influence on fashion. Because of the internet, the $5,600 price tag yielded a discussion of their absurdity and the presence of excess within the fashion community. These discussions are not polluted by the internet’s obsession with the price, they are enhanced by it. The 20 second catwalk was able to live on for months, and now years. The stylistic purpose of the collection – show stopping garments – grew to be an assembly of brand-defining pieces, its innovations maintaining the inherent nature of extreme fashion: to redefine.
Whether they redefine underwear’s historical identity as a garment, redefine gender norms of designer underwear, or redefine the acceptable purpose of a garment, the golden Miu Miu panties are probably not worth $5,600 to the consumer, but to the fashion world they are priceless.
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