Olivia Colman surprises as Miu Miu model at Paris Fashion Week

Olivia Colman has made an unexpected turn as a runway model, appearing in Miu Miu‘s spring/summer 2027 show at Paris Fashion Week.

The Oscar-winning British actor wore a black leather blazer with a matching knee-length skirt on the royal purple runway.

She joined a star-studded cast that included Emma Corrin, Gigi Hadid and Jamie Bell.

Corrin’s outfit was a mottled brown leather jacket over a printed shirt and tiny white shorts.

Hadid appeared in a diamante-panelled midi skirt, cropped grey top and New Balance x Miu Miu trainers.

Bell was dressed in a sporty navy and white long-sleeved top with checked trousers.

The show was staged at the Palais d’Iena, where Emma Mackey, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Nara Smith, Alexa Chung, Ella Bright and Thai actor Becky Armstrong watched from the front row.

Celebrity casting has become something of a Miu Miu tradition, with previous shows putting actors including Willem Dafoe, Richard E Grant and Gillian Anderson on the runway.

The line-up reflects designer Miuccia Prada‘s fondness for characters rather than a conventional cast of models.

The clothes themselves looked like the contents of several very different wardrobes had been emptied and reassembled in the signature Miu Miu way of unexpected combinations.

Checked blazers came with tartan skirts and technical sports tops.

Cropped rash-vest-like shirts exposed the stomach above sensible knee-length pleats, and running trainers accompanied tailoring.

It was sports day meets the office with a little school uniform thrown in.

Checks and tartans have appeared repeatedly during the shows this Fashion Month, often in a spring rendition of lighter ginghams and mismatched variations.

Miu Miu’s opening looks pushed the pattern further, layering brown, cream, red and navy checks together rather than neatly matching them.

The knee-length skirt was equally difficult to miss.

Prada’s spring/summer show in Milan last month was devoted almost entirely to the garment, with Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons exploring dozens of variations on it.

At Miu Miu, Prada returned to roughly the same length but made it feel younger and messier.

Pleated skirts sat low on the hips with drawstrings peeking over their waistbands, sometimes worn with a traditional blazer and elsewhere with a tiny sports top and trainers.

The collection did eventually move away from the midi.

Micro shorts appeared beneath oversized tailoring, low-rise jeans were decorated with dangling chains, and straight-leg tracksuit bottoms were worn with blazers and scarves.

That sense of odd combinations continued with one of the season’s other big themes: the return of business casual.

Skirt suits appeared in checks, shiny leather and crocodile-effect finishes, but the styling prevented them from becoming too corporate.

Blazers were thrown over tiny tops, pussy-bow blouses were left open at the chest and silk scarves were threaded through waistbands or tied around bare stomachs.

V-necks and scooped necklines were everywhere too, often cut low enough to expose another layer underneath.

Wraparound halternecks in lime, orange and yellow polka dots were twisted around the body, sometimes underneath blazers and sometimes worn alone with knee-length shorts.

The bright colours punctuated an otherwise collegiate palette of brown, burgundy, navy and grey, with flashes of cobalt blue, royal purple, orange and acidic green.

Some of the prints had a distinctly 70s flavour, a decade Miu Miu frequently references.

Geometric patterns covered pussy-bow blouses and abbreviated dresses, while narrow scarves, tinted sunglasses and patent brown leather emphasised the retro vibe.

Like the combination of clothes, Miuccia Prada also combined decades, featuring track jackets, cropped sports tops and running shoes that brought the 90s and 00s into the collection.

The extremely low waistlines and micro shorts recalled the latter decade’s obsession with exposing the stomach.

This high-low mix has become central to Miu Miu’s enormous influence on fashion in recent years.

Prada launched Miu Miu in 1993, naming it after her own childhood nickname.

Conceived as a more instinctive and playful counterpart to Prada, it gradually developed into a major label in its own right, moving its runway shows from Milan to Paris in 2006.

Its deliberately awkward combinations have become particularly influential: prim cardigans with tiny skirts, socks with unlikely shoes, underwear worn visibly and clothes that seem slightly “wrong” together.

Spring/summer 2027 continued that formula, only this time the collision was between the boardroom, the gym and whatever somebody might have worn the night before.

As the eveningwear trickled onto the runway, diamante-trimmed crop tops and tiny shorts appeared alongside metallic fabrics, embellished skirts and leather jackets.

Hadid’s look was among the clearest examples: a simple grey cropped top worn with a sparkling panelled skirt and trainers.

It was also a neat summary of why Miu Miu has become so influential.

Prada has treated supposedly incompatible clothes as fair game: masculine and feminine, ugly and pretty, formal and casual, expensive and ordinary.

In this show, an office blazer could sit over a sports top, a silk scarf became a belt, and a glittering skirt worked with running shoes.

The models’ slightly windswept hair and the occasional crumpled garment only added to the impression that nobody had spent very long worrying whether everything technically went together.

Prada herself appeared at the end wearing a blue V-neck jumper and midi skirt, giving the audience a wave before disappearing backstage.

If spring/summer 2027 gave one styling tip, it’s that the blazer can be for work, for the gym and for a party.