The Transformative Power of Miu Miu

by: Emily Kirkpatrick

Miu Miu’s fourth installment in their Women’s Tales short film series, It’s Getting Late, directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Massy Tadjedin, follows five women through their evening as they shift roles thanks to the transformative power of Miu Miu’s clothing. Each film in the series was directed by a leading female director, beginning in January of 2011 with Zoe Cassavetes study of the ultra-feminine in The Powder Room, complimented by Lucrecia Martel’s opposingly eerie, surrealist Muta, and followed by Giada Colagrande’s haunting The Woman Dress set in an all-female world full of witch covens and rituals. Through this series of short films Miu Miu seeks to explore the love affair women have with their clothing and its mutable abilities. Each film immerses the viewer in an alternative Miu Miu inflected reality that presents a different viewpoint on the questions of the female relationship to clothing and the power that is findable within it to both express who they truly are and to play a role.

As Massy Tadjedin explains it, “We make our faces, our suits, our selves just a little more ready for wherever it is we’re going. Fashion is never just the clothes. It’s our mood, our excitement for something, our expectations, our attitudes, our outlooks.” Tadjedin’s short looks at four women from very different backgrounds as they shift roles from day to night. A serious business women (Rinko Kikuchi), a mother playing with her daughter (Gemma Arterton), a film editor cutting together old movies (Patricia Clarkson), and a fashion blogger working in a café (Aubrey Plaza). Although each leads a distinct life, their stories intertwine as they prepare to attend a performance by up and coming singer Zola Jesus. According to Miu Miu, Tadjedin was, “inspired by the common passage of physical and spiritual transformation when moving between the spheres of day and night.” It’s Getting Late explores the rituals of womanhood and the processes we go through in order to create ourselves anew each day and project the correct character or attitude we’d like the rest of the world to perceive. The film presents universality in the ritualism and tradition of being a woman that is affirming, inspirational, and suggests endless possibilities.