Marissa Tozzi

BY MARISSA TOZZI

For Miu Miu’s latest spring 2019 ad campaign by David Sims, entitled “Somewhere, Nowhere”, the house reminds us that life is a journey.

The campaign features actresses Juliette Lewis and Zazie Beetz, Madonna’s daughter Lola Leon, and Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman’s daughter Maya Hawke, all engaged in the journey – be it on public transport, Uber, or the back of a limo. We watch as if sitting in a cinema as each of the protagonists travels through an unknown city, alone with their thoughts.

“Neither arriving nor departing, these images celebrate the notion of simply being — the geography hazy, the timing uncertain, they present a universal, everywhere and anytime,” the press release accompanying the campaign explains. “Fleeting and transitory, reasoning uncertain, the travel could easily be an escape, or a coming home. The only concrete, the only constants, are the women themselves — singular, original, always unique.” 

The idea is aligned with Miuccia Prada’s youthful label which successfully deglamorizes the fashion world peeling back to the reality behind all the charm. The campaign is an allegory representing the uncertain and chaotic attributes of life and perhaps fashion in its entirety.

Sims successfully portrays the title’s unpredictability by capturing such visually captivating images — ones in which the travelers were all fabulously dressed, outwardly confident, and seemingly at-ease — in situations that presumably, were not.

In many ways, the campaign feels like film stills where the heroine is en route to resolve the climatic issue or the closing scene where she has come to peace with the world as closing credits roll. Either way, we can’t take our eyes off the film and after two seasons of ad campaigns that were more style than substance, this campaign feels like an indie blockbuster.