How Miu Miu Made the World’s Skimpiest Luxury Outfit a Viral Success

“It’s become a meme,” said AJ Tinsley, 24, an Irish fashion designer living in London, who posted his own DIY version of the outfit to TikTok.

No spring 2022 designer look has been more relentlessly copied, flaunted, gawked at, criticized, admired, reproduced, photographed and talked about than what’s come to be known as “the Miu Miu set.” The outfit began appearing on magazine covers last month, worn by everyone from Nicole Kidman for Vanity Fair to the model Paloma Elsesser for i-D. While the set is often photographed on young, extremely thin models and influencers, those two covers made headlines for featuring it on a woman in her 50s and a plus-size model, respectively. In Miu Miu’s bubblegum-pink advertisements, It-girl-of-the-moment Hailey Bieber poses in versions of the set. And the pieces barely had time to hit stores before they were sold out. A second delivery, due soon, has already been pre-sold-out, according to Prada. The tiny miniskirts, which retailed for $995 for the Chino version and $1,200 for the Prince of Wales checked one, are going for twice that on eBay.

Lookalike sets have predictably been spotted on cheap ecommerce sites like Fashion Nova. Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein currently offers over 8,000 styles of sorta-Miu-Miu pleated miniskirts. The garment’s relative simplicity has also made it a prime target for fashion DIY-ers on TikTok and YouTube. These cunning crafters teach viewers how to tailor their own sets, usually using thrifted men’s chino pants. Mr. Tinsley, the Irish fashion designer, said he achieved his version for just a “fiver.”

Shuang Bright, a 26-year-old New York City videographer, started doing DIYs because she wanted to make fashion accessible to more people. She jumped on the Miu Miu set right after the spring runway show, excited by how easily people could recreate it using pieces they might already have, like preppy sweaters and khakis. She did note that, although the DIYs couldn’t match the quality of the real Miu Miu deal, they let young people feel like they’re part of the moment. “The silhouette was particularly appealing to Gen Z,” she said, “because of how closely it aligned with the 2000s trends of…really short and revealing [clothing].”

In that sense, the Miu Miu set is an interesting case study of fashion that syncs with youth-led internet culture, rather than speaking to the same old clients who generally shop at high-end boutiques. Some credit Mrs. Prada’s collaborator on the show, Lotta Volkova—a stylist and cohort of Balenciaga creative director Demna—with reinvigorating the brand. But she’s the stylist; Mrs. Prada still created the designs. Regardless of who did what, the nerve-hitting collection resonated well beyond the typical fashion circuit. The fashion designer Mr. Tinsley said, “In a sense it’s a good marketing thing for Miu Miu because a lot of people who are not too into fashion know it now…It’s introducing Miu Miu to a new generation.” Miu Miu, whose brand name derives from Mrs. Prada’s family nickname, was founded in 1993 as a kind of younger sister to the Prada brand. But since then, it’s increasingly emerged from Prada’s shadow, showing in Paris instead of Milan and becoming a luxury player in its own right.

Even high-schoolers, at least those with more lenient parents and teachers, are getting in on the trend. Ashley Langholtz, a 17-year-old high-school senior at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, N.Y., started the Instagram account @miumiuset to chronicle the look’s appearances in magazines and out in the wild.  She decided to start the account when, a few weeks ago during her winter break, she awoke to find that her entire feed consisted of Miu Miu posts. She has noticed students at her school wearing versions of the set that adapt thrifted pieces. So far this hasn’t been policed by the school’s imprecise dress code. 

Mr. Tinsley mused that the miniskirt might become Miu Miu’s signature luxury item, the equivalent of Chanel’s 2.55 quilted purse or a

Burberry

trench coat. The brand certainly seems eager to continue its success story. For its fall collection, shown earlier this month in Paris, it reprised the low-slung pleated miniskirt in several looks.

The risqué look has its limits. Jennifer Girukwishaka, one of the most in-demand models of the moment, walked in the spring Miu Miu show and recently wore the outfit in a British Vogue shoot shot by

Craig McDean.

While she said that her first impression of the skirt was, “Wow!” (in a good way) she said it might be better suited for fashion cities like Milan and Paris than those in her African home country. “In Burundi we wouldn’t wear that,” she said. She giggled imagining what her mother would think of the outfit. “She wouldn’t let me out of the house wearing that.”