{"id":739189,"date":"2025-11-26T03:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=739189"},"modified":"2025-11-26T03:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T00:43:10","slug":"miu-miu-literary-club-heads-to-shanghai-and-offers-a-deeper-take-on-fashions-book-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=739189","title":{"rendered":"Miu Miu Literary Club Heads to Shanghai\u2014and Offers a Deeper Take on Fashion\u2019s Book Obsession"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Living<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Miu Miu Literary Club Heads to Shanghai\u2014and Offers a Deeper Take on Fashion\u2019s Book Obsession<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Liam Hess<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 25, 2025<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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This past weekend, if you were walking through Shanghai\u2019s Jing\u2019An neighborhood\u2014with the gilded roofs of its famous ancient temple site in one direction, and the teeming storefronts of the West Nanjing Road in the other\u2014you might have spotted something a little curious. Wandering through the gates and under the colonnades of the Shanghai Exhibition Centre, crowds of smartly dressed locals were clutching takeaway coffee cups in pastel shades with matching stacks of books tucked under their arms, chattering around the fountains in the courtyards or along the sweeping staircases that led up to the building\u2019s western wing. Look a little closer, and you\u2019d have noticed that a number of them were wearing the unmistakable arches of a specific brand\u2019s logo: Miu Miu.<\/p>\n

After two years serving as a reliable highlight of the events surrounding Salone del Mobile in Milan each spring, Miu Miu Literary Club landed in Shanghai, where, over a series of days, it hosted panels of writers and thinkers to discuss a handful of books by women writers selected by Mrs. Prada herself, punctuated by performances from musicians and poets. Following on from the theme of women\u2019s education that anchored this year\u2019s Milan outing in April, the Shanghai edition featured Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s The Inseparables<\/em> and Fumiko Enchi\u2019s The Waiting Years,<\/em> with the addition of The Fall of the Pagoda<\/em> by Eileen Chang, the trailblazing writer whose body of work has made her one of the most revered Chinese novelists of the 20th century.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

As Zhang Pinjing, a professor at the School of Humanities, Tongji University, and the figure tasked with assembling the lineup of speakers, put it: \u201cChang is a defining figure not only among women writers but in modern Chinese literature as a whole. Her work is essential reading.\u201d Having made my way through most of The Fall of the Pagoda<\/em> on my journey over, I can attest to that: charting the journey of a young woman from an aristocratic family on the decline through a rapidly changing Shanghai in the 1920s and \u201930s, it\u2019s both riveting and eerily timeless. And in keeping with the de Beauvoir and Enchi novels, it remains one of the writer\u2019s lesser-known works\u2014suiting the project\u2019s spirit of reviving \u201cwhat you might call overlooked gems,\u201d per Pinjing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The growth of Miu Miu Literary Club feels fortuitously timed: There\u2019s been a rising fashion-world fixation on literature over the past few seasons, with models launching their own book clubs, designers printing extracts of books across clothes, and brands selling statement tote bags decorated with the covers of classic novels. As always, however, where others zig, Mrs. Prada zags. In a similar vein to the other major pillar of Miu Miu\u2019s cultural programming, the long-running Women\u2019s Tales initiative, which commissions women filmmakers to create original short films, the Literary Club takes its mission seriously. There are conversations between women writers that anyone can attend\u2014and, through its Summer Reads program, Miu Miu has distributed thousands of copies of each book spotlighted through the Literary Club to readers for free, via pop-ups around the globe. (So too does it slyly flesh out themes explored in the label\u2019s collections: It was hard not to identify a throughline between the sartorial signifiers of domestic life embedded in Miu Miu\u2019s spring 2026 collection\u2014aprons, pinafores, housecoats\u2014and the inner lives of the maids and concubines surveyed in Enchi\u2019s novel, in particular.)<\/p>\n

So, then, to the talks, which took place within an airy, light-filled hall decorated in the style of a mid-century Milanese library, a jewel-toned yellow sofa surrounded by Marcel Breuer chairs and set against a rippling crimson velvet curtain. First up was a discussion of The Inseparables<\/em>, de Beauvoir\u2019s heart-wrenching semi-autobiographical novel about a passionate friendship between teenage girls that was only published in 2020. \u201cThe scaffolds they want to break free from can still be felt now, and the plights they wanted to escape still exist,\u201d observed panelist Yuan Xiaoyi, a scholar of French literature. \u201cEven when she\u2019s writing fiction, de Beauvoir is still a realist writer.\u201d (The assembled group, which included the book\u2019s Chinese translator, Cao Dongxue, also made special mention of de Beauvoir\u2019s 1955 trip to the country with Jean-Paul Sartre, making them some of the first academics to visit after the People\u2019s Republic of China was established. \u201cSo she is an old friend of ours,\u201d said Xiaoyi, to a swell of laughter from the crowd.)<\/p>\n

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Actor Li Gengxi reads from Fumiko Enchi\u2019s The Waiting Years.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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Musician Chen Sijiang performs.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Next, it was time for an appropriately East-meets-West lunch\u2014miniature Wagyu beef sandwiches and zucchini ciabatta, washed down with iced teas or negronis, depending on your constitution\u2014and a stirring performance from Chen Sijiang, frontwoman of the Chengdu-based indie band Hiperson, before an afternoon session on Chang\u2019s novel. It was this talk\u2014which coincided with the 30th anniversary of Chang\u2019s death, and began with a reading from the novel by actor Zhao Jinmai, the Miu Miu ambassador who stars in Bi Gan\u2019s Resurrection,<\/em> a notable hit from this year\u2019s Cannes Film Festival\u2014that served as the day\u2019s thematic lynchpin. The Malaysian Chinese author Li Zishu, who led the discussion, was unafraid to offer her critiques of the book\u2014in particular, her dissatisfaction with Chang\u2019s portrayal of the central character\u2019s mother\u2014while novelist Di An pointed out the parallels she discovered between the protagonist\u2019s journey and her own liberation as a woman, speaking frankly about her (amicable) divorce and how she left her stable career as a journalist to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer. \u201cIt\u2019s not selfish to pursue our own dreams,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to help minimize that guilt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

If the reactions from those listening intently on the front row were anything to go by, it was a message that hit home\u2014for the students, the actors and musicians clad in their Miu Miu finery, and the silver-haired professors in attendance alike. Pingjin was careful about curating a lineup of panelists who were \u201cboth writers and thinkers,\u201d she says\u2014much like de Beauvoir herself. \u201cI wanted speakers who could represent women at different stages of growth.\u201d She found herself pleasantly surprised by the discussion generated around de Beauvoir\u2019s relationship with Sartre, with many of the younger women objecting to his treatment of her. \u201cThis shift in perspective moved me,\u201d she said. \u201cIt reflects how women\u2019s understanding of relationships has clearly evolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It also spoke to what\u2019s made the Miu Miu Literary Club\u2014and, indeed, the Women\u2019s Tales program\u2014such a roaring success: there\u2019s nothing like a good story to bring people together, and to spark conversation. \u201cWe wanted to be able to speak from the text outward\u2014from the novels themselves into the realities of our present moment, in China as well as globally,\u201d Pingjin added.<\/p>\n

Conversations about the books were in full swing later that evening, as the hall in which the book club took place was transformed into a very different kind of club, with disco lights twinkling across the ceilings while the buzzy alt-pop musician Lexie Liu performed a handful of her hits to an enthusiastically cheering crowd. But heading back out into the corridor, I noticed a library space tucked away at one end of the wing was still occupied by a dozen or so attendees, poring over their books to the distant echo of Liu\u2019s music. \u201cThe goal was never simply to interpret the books, but to use them as bridges,\u201d Pingjin had told me earlier in the day. On that front, mission accomplished.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/miu-miu-literary-club-shanghai<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Living Miu Miu Literary Club Heads to Shanghai\u2014and Offers a Deeper Take on Fashion\u2019s Book Obsession By Liam Hess November 25, 2025 Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu This past weekend, if you were walking through Shanghai\u2019s Jing\u2019An neighborhood\u2014with the gilded roofs of its famous ancient temple site in one direction, and the teeming storefronts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":739190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-739189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=739189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/739190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=739189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=739189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=739189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}