From festive moment to cultural asset: Miu Miu’s yearly brand story

While many brands still interpret Chinese New Year with bold reds and festive spectacle, Miu Miu’s latest short film, The Encounter (如期而遇), takes a different approach, using a quiet, gray-toned architectural canvas to evoke an entirely distinct holiday mood. A white horse stands silently amid the mist surrounding Hangzhou’s Gongwang Art Museum, as brand ambassadors Lexie Liu and Zhao Jinmai wander across the scene. Hints of the season remain — a few red lanterns, subtly scattered in corners like moments of joys — but they do not dominate bustling streets. Instead, they inhabit calm corridors and courtyards, bringing a gentle, serene warmth to the gray-and-white textures of the surroundings. This poetic narrative extends beyond the screen. From January 23 to 25, Miu Miu is bringing the story to life along Shanghai’s historic yet modern Donghu Road. Three locations — FUFU, BLAZ, and Sugar Plum — will become the next chapter of the story. Stripped of traditional symbols, each is reimagined in Miu Miu’s aesthetic, offering offline encounters with the “Miu Miu girls.” From the outset, the activations generated high-density social media buzz, quickly becoming a destination for discerning audience members. Yet Miu Miu’s impact goes beyond visibility. It draws not onlookers, but a group of participants willing to step into the brand’s world and weave their own experiences into it — a community of “Miu Miu girls” who choose to be part of the story. Beyond reunion: The Encounter The Encounter eschews traditional Chinese New Year symbols of reunion, festivity, and abundance. Directed by young Chinese filmmaker Gu You and shot at the Gongwang Art Museum in Hangzhou, the film sets its story against the serene lines of modernist architecture shrouded in winter mist. Liu and Zhao move freely through the space, running and wandering, while scattered red spheres and lanterns hint at the season, yet read more as composed artistic installations, offering a quiet and poetic interpretation of the holiday. Gu is known for his calm, poetic visual language that explores family, emotion, and life within the aesthetics of Eastern landscapes. His restrained, reflective approach aligns with Miu Miu’s intention to evoke a contemplative mood for the New Year, resulting in a short film that feels intimate, imaginative, and carefully composed. The film’s central motif, a white horse — traditionally a symbol of dynamic energy — moves slowly, standing quietly with an air of independence and elegance. Its power is internalized rather than expressed in overt celebration. Miu Miu does not aim to create an emotional crescendo; instead, it offers a rarer state for the New Year — unhurried, unassuming, simply standing at the threshold of time, sensing the inner movement of the self as the year turns. The film crafts a private, elevated, and imaginative emotional space. It does not ask, “How should we celebrate?” but rather, “What do you feel in this moment?” This respect for individual inner experience and the resonance it produces is more moving than formulaic displays of festive emotion. Bringing the ‘Miu Miu spirit’ to the neighborhood Last Chinese New Year, Miu Miu staged a series of immersive experiences across Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, each deeply rooted in local culture. At Liwan Lake Park in Guangzhou, guests drifted along the gardens on “Smooth Sailing” flower boats; at the Shichahai Ice Rink in Beijing, visitors explored the “Ice and Snow Rendezvous” on ice bicycles; and at Raccoon Records in Shanghai, the festive rhythm was felt through the debut of the maison’s Chinese New Year single. Across all three cities, Miu Miu maintained a unified gifting narrative, presenting the Fortune Book for the Year of the Snake alongside Lexie Liu’s limited-edition CNY vinyl, merging regional identity with the brand’s signature touch to welcome the new year. This year, Miu Miu shifted from a “multi-city tour” approach to a “single-point focus,” concentrating its efforts on the historic Donghu Road in Shanghai. The street, steeped in history yet radiating contemporary energy, resonates with Miu Miu’s rebellious and elegant spirit. The brand carefully selected three everyday spaces in the district frequented by its target audience and assigned each a distinct narrative role: FUFU Shanghai’s courtyard is adorned with festive lighting and hanging lanterns, creating a warm, quiet retreat, while an interactive Fortune Book station invites guests to explore their aspirations for 2026; BLAZ was transformed into a stylish social salon, where curated music and seasonal menus integrated the brand experience with casual gatherings; and Sugar Plum became a cozy daily stop, offering limited-edition coffee and mulled wine, quietly bringing festive greetings into guests’ everyday routines. These locations are not isolated points but together form a walkable, explorable district map. As the festive lights illuminate the street, guests move from one venue to another, completing a full loop from immersive experience to social interaction and daily-life integration. Marketing thus transcends a one-off spectacle, becoming an active, immersive encounter in harmony with the brand’s aesthetic. Not far from the street, the Miu Miu boutique at Shanghai iapm extends this celebratory spirit — the store façade refreshed and integrated with special CNY elements — allowing the brand’s festive experience to flow seamlessly from public spaces to a dedicated flagship, creating a continuous narrative across the district. More than a year: A serialized story Yet, what truly distinguishes Miu Miu’s New Year narrative is not merely in its offline activations, but its ability to transform festive marketing into a brand story that unfolds episode by episode. At its core, this approach breaks away from the long-standing one-off logic that has defined New Year campaigns in the luxury industry. While most brands continue to treat the New Year as an isolated moment — one that demands reinvention and concentrated impact each year — Miu Miu has established The Encounter as a recurring New Year IP, building an open and extensible narrative framework. Within it, the brand no longer needs to begin from scratch annually; instead, like a serialized drama, it can revisit a familiar emotional register while refreshing its characters, settings, and themes. In doing so, Miu Miu moves beyond the industry’s habitual notion of holiday exclusivity, converting short-lived seasonal attention into a sustained accumulation of emotional continuity and mental equity. The result is a clear and enduring point of differentiation: the question surrounding Miu Miu’s New Year is no longer, What will it do this year? but, How will it be told this time? Last year, the story unfolded in the bustle of a Hong Kong-style diner in Beijing. As a live band played on, Liu Haocun and Zhao Jinmai drifted into a dreamlike after-hours reverie, where the crowd had dispersed. Through improvised dance and music, the film captured the outwardly expressive, playful exuberance of the Chinese New Year of the Snake. This year, the setting shifts to a hushed art museum in Hangzhou. Liu and Zhao move slowly through mist and architecture, arriving at a quiet encounter with a symbolic white horse. Though the narrative moves from urban clamor to natural stillness, and the emotional register turns from open celebration to inward reflection, both films remain anchored in the same core impulse: to trace the subtle, evolving inner states and anticipatory emotions of the “Miu Miu girl” at the threshold between the old and the new. In the auditory dimension of its brand storytelling, Miu Miu shows the same sense of continuity over time. Music is no longer treated as a decorative accessory to festive campaigns, but shaped into a form of emotional capital. The brand’s ongoing collaboration with its ambassador, musician Lexie Liu, forms a moment of aesthetic alignment: her signature electronic textures, future-facing melodies, and independent creative stance echo Miu Miu’s vision of contemporary femininity — one that balances sweetness with rebellion. Last year, Liu’s Chinese New Year single Come Dance, created for Miu Miu, began to establish the brand’s sonic foundation. This year, she once again composed a bespoke New Year track for the house — Chun, released on January 19. In the piece, Liu constructs a soundscape where overlapping temporalities converge: echoes of old Shanghai ripple through electronic textures and future-facing rhythms, producing a tension that feels at once familiar and new. This is not a simple layering of elements, but a deliberate and finely calibrated composition — one that functions as an audible annotation of Miu Miu’s aesthetic, generating a distinctly contemporary tension between classicism and rebellion. Taken together, these works are not routine annual updates to a seasonal soundtrack, but part of an ongoing construction of the brand’s sonic identity. Through the steady continuation of melody year after year, Miu Miu quietly trains the listener’s ear, enabling it to recognize — and come to anticipate — the particular sense of lightness and movement that has become uniquely its own. Heritage over hype Today, Miu Miu has become one of the fastest-growing brands within the Prada Group. Its poise and success, however, are far from accidental — they are the result of more than a decade of sustained cultural investment. Since its founding by Miuccia Prada, the brand has remained anchored to a central mission: to focus on women’s experiences, observe their lives, and reflect on their multifaceted realities through the lens of both history and the present. Through cross-disciplinary explorations in fashion, film, literature, and art, Miu Miu translates abstract ideas into tangible cultural expressions, continually developing content IPs with lasting impact, expanding the brand’s imaginative and spiritual boundaries. This strategy has long extended into film and the arts. In 2011, Miu Miu launched its Women’s Tales series of short films, inviting female directors from around the world to contribute. At a time when women’s issues had yet to enter the mainstream public discourse, the brand was already using film to explore the complex and authentic inner lives of women. To date, the series has produced 30 works, its significance far exceeding conventional brand collaborations and serving as a cornerstone of Miu Miu’s long-term cultural legacy. In recent years, the brand has also brought curated selections from Women’s Tales to screenings in Hangzhou, Chengdu, and Jiaxing’s Wuzhen, translating global female perspectives into local cultural contexts and bridging international narratives with on-the-ground dialogue. At the same time, Miu Miu has deepened its engagement with contemporary art: since 2024, the brand has served as an official partner for Art Basel Paris’ public programs, beginning with Tales & Tellers, curated by Goshka Macuga and organized by Elvira Dyangani Ose, and continuing through Helen Marten’s 30 Blizzards. in October 2025. The initiative also launched its second edition in New York in 2025, presenting evolving site-specific installations and performance art, further expanding Miu Miu’s cross-regional, cross-medium artistic reach. In literature, Miu Miu has forged a similarly long-term cultural path through its Literary Club. Centered on reciprocal and dynamic intellectual exchange, the project began in Milan and has extended to cities including Shanghai. Through curated reading lists and dialogue sessions focusing on classic works by authors such as Simone de Beauvoir and Eileen Chang, it has naturally brought together a discerning audience attuned to independence and personal growth. This literary thread has also deepened through local initiatives in China. Since 2024, Miu Miu has brought themes of female growth into public spaces through its Summer Reading program. In November 2025, the brand hosted the Miu Miu Literary Club in Shanghai, which, thanks to meticulously curated content and organic social media buzz, evolved into a cross-community reading phenomenon. It is precisely these long-term projects — seemingly divorced from immediate commercial gain — that have allowed Miu Miu to amass an irreplaceable cultural capital over the years, shaping its core brand character: a form of effortless, unburdened luxury. These initiatives efficiently gather a discerning, high-aesthetic audience, while redefining the emotional dimension of luxury: it is no longer a weighty marker of social status, but a light, resonant celebration of the “ideal self,” offering beauty without constraint and a sense of freedom. The recent popularity of the “Miu-style heiress” and “literary girl” aesthetics draws directly from this foundation. Far from a superficial nod to trends, these styles are the natural fruits of over a decade of Miu Miu’s cultivation of female narratives and intellectual elegance. In doing so, the brand has carved out a distinct path in the luxury landscape: across ages and life stages, women can find in Miu Miu a projection of the “Miu Miu girl” — not defined by wealth, but by an independent spirit, curiosity, and vibrant inner life. This sense of youthful elevation is less about age than it is a mindset and a stance. It is clear that all of Miu Miu’s storytelling is rooted in a long-term vision. Its Chinese New Year campaigns avoid chasing fleeting trends precisely because they are supported by a deeply rooted brand tree. It does not seek to bloom overnight, but steadily grows new branches each season, inviting pause, sharing, and cultivating anticipation for the blossoms of the year to come. This year’s campaign also sets a new standard for holiday marketing: Miu Miu transforms the Chinese New Year from a single calendar moment into a serialized story, an immersive setting, and a form of aspirational recognition. Through consistent, ongoing narratives, each seasonal interaction transcends isolated consumer behavior and becomes an emotional investment in the brand’s world. These moments of resonance and memory ultimately crystallize into enduring brand equity, continually infusing Miu Miu with lasting cultural momentum.

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From festive moment to cultural asset: Miu Miu’s yearly brand story