“We’re in the endcore now.” That was the essay that popped up on my phone when I tapped the QR code on the front page of a newspaper sitting on my seat at the Miu Miu show. After a month of collections it takes a lot to grab my attention, but “endcore” did it. The essay is the work of Shumon Basar, the British author of the 2021 book The Extreme Self, which asks questions about individuality—and the digitally influenced lack thereof—not unlike the ones Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons were posing at the Prada show in Milan a couple of weeks ago.

Endcore, Basar writes, is “a widespread feeling that things we once held onto as unchangeable, fundamental facts are now ending… We feel like The End is approaching, like an asteroid is hurtling towards us; but it also strangely never seems to reach us. So we keep waiting. Endcore… is a verb, a predicament, a texture of the time we call the present. It’s an unnerving, queasy contemplation we have entered an ‘after’ era—but it’s not after one thing (like ‘modernity’), it’s after everything.”

If you know anything about Miuccia Prada you know that this kind of big thinking is a turn-on for her. And there was some big thinking going on here. The newspaper, which was “envisaged” by the artist Goshka Macuga, featured dozens of QR codes, each linking to different texts. Prada rejected the idea that there were direct links between the art project and the collection, but for the sake of this review, let’s establish the endcore lexicon.

To start, there are underthings worn as outer things, such as white cotton slips, some with graphic sequin embroideries. Sporty track separates and cut-out bathing suits are also in the mix, along with private school uniforms, and 1970s-ish geometric prints lifted from a spring 2005 collection when life and the Miu Miu label were simpler propositions. It was a real mish-mash of things that don’t belong together, yet somehow work together. Western belts and waitress dresses? Vintage-look slips and sporty bikini tops? Yes and yes. With its what-the-hell irreverence, endcore reflects our moment’s anything goes attitudes. And was that Hilary Swank and Willem Dafoe on the runway? Also yes.