Miu Miu Unveils Their Latest Women’s Tales Film With Joanna Hogg in London
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As a throng of taxis shuttled people through Mayfair ahead of the BAFTAs and London Fashion Week, another stylish and starry crowd was ducking into the Curzon cinema for Miu Miu’s 29th edition of Women’s Tales. Safe from the chill and the rush outside, guests toted pink boxes of popcorn, flutes of champagne, and Miu Miu Wander and Beau bags in pops of teal and sand.
The affair was anchored by an intimate screening of Autobiografia di una Borsetta, a short written and directed by British filmmaker Joanna Hogg, and commissioned by Miu Miu. Over some 30 years, Hogg has cultivated a distinct style, taking a precise, intensely personal approach to directing and writing: Among her most celebrated creations are her semi-autobiographical The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II, starring Honor Swinton Byrne and Tom Burke, and her 1986 debut (and film school project) Caprice, with her childhood friend Tilda Swinton. Indeed, Caprice—a prismatic tumble through the hierarchies of a fashion magazine—orbits the same universe as Autobiografia di una Borsetta, though this time, Hogg acts as director, producer, writer, and cinematographer (with an iPhone 16).
The arthouse cinema’s main room seated models of the moment with filmmakers, Bridgerton actors, Miu Miu Literary Club alumni, and other friends of the brand—all dressed in head-to-toe Miu Miu, of course. The Brits played with the Italian house’s feminine flair: Alexa Chung wore a Pretty Woman-esque cut-out bodysuit and sky blue patent leather skirt, while actor and brand ambassador Emma Corrin leaned into the sportier sensibilities of the current collection, in a strapless navy top with a white-piped matching bikini top underneath and those covetable sliders on their feet. Little Simz gave suiting some sauce, with a tailored blazer, red quarter-zip, and the band of her underwear pulled high above her suit trousers. The choices of other guests, from Kai-Isaiah Jamal to Charithra Chandran, Pixie Geldof, Arlo Parks, and Bel Powley, spanned Miu Miu’s special form of glam gaiety: sports jackets paired with prim pleated skirts, ladylike layering, off-beat accessories (a lot of low-slung belts), and color combos of seafoam and moss green, raspberry and turquoise.
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Autobiografia di una Borsetta takes the perspective of an unconventional protagonist: a cream Miu Miu Wander bag that’s been given as a present to a young girl. Shot in the gorgeous Tuscan region of Maremma, Italy, the film makes the bag both a witness to and a prism of human experience—its curved handle a window on the world—as the Wander observes the girl’s coming-of-age and feels the tension of its own value and vulnerability as it changes hands.
Befitting Miu Miu’s bookish reputation, Hogg took inspiration from two texts for the project: James Fenimore Cooper’s Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief (1843), a novel about the upper echelons of New York Society from the point of view of a woman’s handkerchief, and John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel’s forthcoming The Prop, which explores the importance of objects in movies. Rhodes and Gorfinkel were in the front rows of the cinema, as were the family we see onscreen, who waved enthusiastically when Hogg shouted them out. (The girls were also dressed in Miu Miu.)
“It’s struck me in new ways, seeing it here with you all tonight,” Hogg—wearing a chic, espresso suede Miu Miu skirt suit—told the crowd. She was in conversation with Gentlewoman editor-in-chief Penny Martin following the screening, discussing the inspirations and initial concepts behind the film.
Women’s Tales is a series of short films commissioned biannually. Now in its 15th year, it is committed to women in film telling women’s stories. Hogg, the first English director in the series, joins an impressive roster including Agnès Varda, Ava DuVernay, and Miranda July. Filmmakers work to an intentionally vague brief from Mrs. Muccia Prada: make a short film, using Miu Miu’s latest collection, that articulates a woman’s story.
“I didn’t want to make a short film that was something I would make anyway—I wanted to make something that got to the heart of Miu Miu…But at the same time, I realized my cinema, [my] fascinations with character, exploration of grief, those more serious subjects…They don’t contradict each other. And if they do, it’s interesting,” Hogg said.
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