Miu’s your daddy? Willem Dafoe just closed Miu Miu SS25

For last season’s Miu Miu catwalk, Miuccia Prada hand-picked actor Luther Ford to walk her AW24 show for a display of youthful twinkishness at Paris Fashion Week. This season, however, the designer has taken the opposite tack and gone for an elder statesman of the daddy persuasion (Mrs P is an equal opportunities employer, after all). Closing out Miu Miu’s SS25 show today (October 1) was none other than Willem Dafoe, making his big return to the Pradaverse after walking for Mrs P at her AW12 Prada menswear show.

Back then, Dafoe ascended the catwalk in a sharply tailored jacket, overcoat and a high-neck white collar, plus a pair of round spectacles hanging from his pocket. This time, though, it was as if the actor was wearing the same outfit, but Miu Miu-fied for the little sister brand: a slouchy mac replaced the sharp overcoat, his grey slacks were looser and free, one side of his collar unceremoniously stuck out from beneath his crew neck, and his boot buckles were left open, as if he’s slipped on his shoes and run straight out on the catwalk.

Though Dafoe’s star power probably would’ve been enough on its own, this season was a particularly A-list heavy cast, featuring additional runway appearances from rapper Little Simz (who made her debut alongside Ford last season) as well as American actress Hilary Swank, perennial It-girl Alexa Chung, AW24 campaign star Cara Delevingne, model-of-the-moment Amelia Gray, plus Nicole Kidman’s daughter Sunday Rose. And if all that wasn’t enough, Addison Rae was sitting front row!

On the catwalk, Mrs Prada clashed sporting jackets with feminine dresses and skirts, encased swimming briefs with lots of metal belts, and shrouded asymmetric cut-out dresses with boxy men’s blazers. As always at Miu Miu, ingenious layering took centre stage, with many of the models appearing with knitwear knotted around their waists, while belts were wrapped around arms and leg warmers bedded beneath open-toe pumps. Graphic, 70s prints adorned overcoats and pencil skirts halfway through the show, while patent leather wrap skirts and high-cut cotton boxers were a lot more daring than last season’s mostly ladylike silhouette.

This season, the show took place in what seemed to be a giant printing press, with copies of a fictional newspaper called The Truthless Times whizzing through the space on conveyor belts above. Notes laid out on seats revealed that the installation – called Salt Tastes Like Sugar – was a “multi-layered project” by the artist Goshka Macuga, which included the printing plant, the fake newspaper (which actually had content inside) and a short film debuted at the beginning of the show. In the film, two characters called Pathos and Logos work for The Truthless Times, which was “established to promote truth in the media and fight against misinformation.” According to the notes, the film was designed to encourage its audience to “critically reflect on the role of individual investigation and expression in shaping public discourse.”