Miu Miu’s very good year
Long referred to as “Prada’s little sister”, Miu Miu’s growth is now outpacing Prada’s as it bets on accessories and China
When Nicole Kidman sported a low-waist, micro-mini skirt and a matching bralette from Miu Miu on the cover of Vanity Fair last year, she sparked a volley of debate about “age-appropriate” dressing. The actress later defended her choice, saying she “begged” to wear the outfit. The incident encapsulates the essence of the 30-year-old brand and the vision of its founder and creative director Miuccia Prada.
“It’s an experimental brand . . . it addresses customers who are very confident in their individuality and accept their contradictions, we help them dress freely,” Benedetta Petruzzo, Miu Miu’s chief executive, says in an interview via Zoom from Los Angeles, where she is about to give birth to her first child.
“That mini skirt was absurdly short, but the Miu Miu women just don’t care,” continues Petruzzo. “The brand is the utmost expression of la signora Prada.
“She’s not just the creative director, she’s the soul of the brand. Miu Miu is Miuccia Prada; it’s the space where she can be entirely herself.”
The 37-year-old Petruzzo joined the €4.2bn-revenue Prada group from Kering Eyewear’s US division, where she was the chief’s deputy, in 2020, only weeks before Italy became the first European country to go into full lockdown following the outbreak of the Covid pandemic.
She admits it wasn’t an easy start, but says the brand is now on the right track and while “Miu Miu is a revolutionary brand, I don’t really see any revolutions ahead”. In its half-year earnings last week, the group posted €1.97bn in retail sales, up 21 per cent year on year, with Miu Miu’s “remarkable performance” driving the result. The brand’s sales were up 50 per cent over the period, outpacing the larger Prada’s 18 per cent increase.
Japan led the group’s growth with sales up 49 per cent. Asia and Europe followed with sales up 25 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively.
Luca Solca, a luxury industry analyst at Bernstein, says Miu Miu is particularly popular in China. This year, the brand featured 85-year-old Chinese actress Wu Yanshu among a group of Gen Z celebrities in its Women’s Tales, a series where female directors are invited to produce short films on the subjects of vanity and femininity in the 21st century. “Miu Miu isn’t a brand for young women; it’s an attitude,” explains Petruzzo. Wu’s involvement was a hit.
Miu Miu isn’t a brand for young women; it’s an attitude
“The brand has recently doubled on its spending on China’s [social media platform] Little Red Book, and started selling bags via the hottest live streamer on the platform,” says Solca. The Shanghai-based app, known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese, appeals to European luxury labels as it has more than 200mn monthly active users, mostly younger women on the lookout for trends and products that can be harder to find in the country.
Petruzzo says Miu Miu is betting on accessories as one of its catalysts for growth. The breakout success of its ballet flats, mini skirts and Wander bag made it the hottest brand in fashion search platform Lyst’s 2022 annual rankings.
“Miu Miu handbags are attractively priced and popular in China, less so in the west, where Miu Miu seems yet to succeed in accessories,” says Solca.
This summer Miu Miu launched the Arcadie bag, which starts at €1,950 and offers a fresh take on Miu Miu’s flagship matelassé leather motif.
Meanwhile, the brand’s 2023 autumn/winter ready-to-wear line, featuring heavy coats and turtlenecks worn over colourful sparkly knickers has taken last year’s miniskirt debate to new lengths.
Singers Rihanna and Olivia Rodrigo, and model sisters Bella and Gigi Hadid are often photographed in the brand, which is also loved by other designers. Dior’s Kim Jones, for example, often wears Miu Miu for highly visible occasions such as runway shows and magazine shoots.
Petruzzo, who wore a Miu Miu blazer for her finance graduation at Milan’s Bocconi University in 2009, and then went on to work for consultancy Bain & Company before joining Kering, does not have a creative education, but says she understands the brand’s aesthetic and values. “I don’t think you can work in this industry without having some sort of creative awareness,” she says.
The executive owes hers to her mother, a retired modern art history professor, who taught her that beauty is not objective but it is very much linked to emotions. “Modern art is the maximum expression of this idea, which essentially means something is beautiful because it triggers emotions though you may not understand it,” Petruzzo explains.
It’s an approach Miuccia Prada has applied to high fashion during the past three decades, inspiring the notion that “ugly-chic” is desirable.
The designer once explained that what is perceived as ugly to her has greater potential than what is defined as beautiful because it is a more truthful representation of reality. “The investigation of ugliness is, to me, more interesting than the bourgeois idea of beauty. And why? Because ugly is human. It touches the bad and the dirty side of people,” she said in a 2013 interview with the Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine.
Her pleated and pencil-shaped skirts; challenging palettes of brown, black and green; and ironic takes on bows, headbands, Mary Janes and other tropes of femininity are quintessentially Prada. With Miu Miu, however, she has gone even further by creating a ground for quirky exploration: from sheer nylon dresses in the 1990s to the preppy pleated miniskirts and strappy ballet flats of more recent seasons.
Petruzzo says that the brand has strived to create a community of people that goes beyond the clothes and accessories it sells. “It’s an ode to freedom,” she says. This resonates with her own progressive ethos, as well as Prada’s, a self-defined leftist feminist.
“I don’t believe in being defined by other people’s opinions, conditioning or tags, I never did,” says Petruzzo.
As part of a turnaround initiated in 2017 to revive lacklustre profits and sales, the Prada group cut back its wholesale network hoping to align prices between retail and ecommerce channels. Last year it increased prices across its brands. Analysts now expect the balance between average price and volumes to improve compared to last year, when price increases had a more significant impact on the group’s earnings.
Petruzzo says she feels “lucky to have the two founders as my bosses and to work for a group which is also a family”.
The Italian luxury group, which is in the process of completing a secondary listing in Milan, has also implemented a succession plan that will eventually see Lorenzo Bertelli, the eldest of Bertelli’s and Prada’s two children, take the helm. The fashion house, of which Miu Miu is the second-largest brand, after Prada, also owns the Church’s and Car Shoe labels.
In December it appointed former Luxottica chief Andrea Guerra as successor to co-chief executives Bertelli and Prada. It also appointed Gianfranco D’Attis, the former boss of Dior US, as the first ever chief executive of Prada.
The younger Bertelli, 34, a former racing car driver who now heads the group’s marketing and corporate social responsibility departments, is expected to take the helm within a few years. Some have criticised the lack of a clear timeline, but Petruzzo is not worried.
“Succession plans are hard,” she says, “but I don’t have any negative perceptions and it doesn’t scare me.”