WHEN CATHERINE MET MIUCCIA

Two extraordinary leading ladies collaborate on an upcycled Miu Miu collection.

- By Lynn Yaeger.

PLAYING THE FIELD
ABOVE: A still from the debut short film of Catherine Martin

When Miuccia Prada reached out to her friend Catherine Martin and suggested that they collaborate on a capsule collection for Miu Miu, Martin immediately thought of the graceful, supremely sporty, sometimes slightly androgynous fashions you might have seen in the South of France in the 1920s. “It was this idea of the world between the wars,” Martin muses. “You have a lot of expatriate artists like the Fitzgeralds going to live on the Riviera because it was inexpensive, and the weather was beautiful, and you got to escape to a more hedonistic place where lots of things were possible.”

Which accompanies her Miu Miu collaboration.

Martin, a much-lauded costume and production designer (four Academy Awards! six BAFTAs! a Tony!), has been escaping the rules for decades. She had also worked with Prada before—on costumes for The Great Gatsby and