Cinema VERITÉ

Vanities / Art+Film

At Art Basel Paris, Miu Miu reaffirms its support of women in film

Ann Binlot

ON THE EVE of Art Basel Paris, around 80 performers dressed in Miu Miu filled the Palais d'lena, the expansive Art Deco building currently home to the French Economic, Social, and Environmental Council—and each Paris Fashion Week, the brand's pret-a-porter shows. This time, though, the actors and models were there for "Tales & Tellers," an immersive exhibition celebrating women in film.

For the exposition, Miuccia Prada tasked Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona director Elvira Dyangani Ose and Polish multidisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga with creating performance pieces and conversation panels inspired by 28 short films from Miu Miu's Women's Tales series. The initiative, which launched in 2011, gives female directors—past participants include Janicza Bravo, Haifaa AlMansour, Miranda July, Chloé Sevigny, and Ava DuVernay—free rein to create short films with costumes by Miu Miu, which then premiere during industry events like New York Fashion Week.

"I am interested by the notion of bringing different conversations into the world of fashion, of engaging with different creative spheres, enriching each other," Prada told Vanity Fair. "it mirrors the exchanges and communications of life. This project is another expansion, shifting between different mediums. And always exploring deep and fundamental thoughts of what it means to be a woman today."

The support of Prada and Miu Miu, the Art Basel Public Program's official partner, remains alarmingly necessary. A 2024 report, "inclusion in the Director's Chair," found a striking lack of women directors in Hollywood: Out of 116 directors surveyed in 2023, only 12 percent were women.

DuVernay understands these challenges firsthand. After she premiered her film Middle of Nowhere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012, "I thought that I would have offers, films, that people would want to work with me in the industry—and none of that happened," she said. Soon after, she directed The Door (2013) as part of Women's Tales. "All I heard was, 'We'll give you a budget to make a movie,' " she recalled. "That was a hugely transformative moment for me, at a time when traditional Hollywood was not inviting me to make things, that this fashion house saw something in my work and wanted to offer me that."