People and Politics at Prada – February 26, 2016<\/p>\n
By Tim Blanks<\/p>\n
In a tour de force, Miuccia Prada offered her own vision of a polarised world: the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor \u2014 reflecting the huge upheaval in the air in fashion, a mirror of the wider world.<\/p>\n
MILAN, Italy \u2014 For all that it was a triumphant return to form, Miuccia Prada’s menswear show in January turned out to be a mere appetiser for the deeper, richer women’s collection she showed tonight.\u200e That was partly a reflection of her own feelings: “A woman is so much more complex than a man. She has to be a mother, a lover, a worker, a beauty…” But it was the way the clothes mirrored those multi-facets \u2014 and the emotional states that accompany them \u2014 that made the show a tour de force.<\/p>\n
Longtime collaborator Frederic Sanchez\u2019s soundtrack of female singers ran a full drenching gamut, from the fierceness of PJ Harvey, to the pain of Piaf to the chill anomie of Nico, by way of sterling accompaniment. Tears flowed backstage.<\/p>\n
Her men were mariners, drifters. People on the move dominate the news. Prada’s women were also wanderers, stateless, \u201cvagabonds\u201d she called them, roaming across different times and places, with their clothing functioning as a record of their journey.<\/p>\n
Some had tiny, padlocked books slung round their necks like pendants. Travel diaries, perhaps? \u201cA little bit of culture,\u201d countered Miuccia. \u201cSecrets, symbols.\u201d Always playing the provocateuse, she claimed she herself had never written one single word in her entire life, but it was intriguing how words were used in this collection. There were six, each of them a month in the Republican Calendar introduced during the French Revolution.<\/p>\n
Why? Because huge upheaval is in the air in fashion, and \u2014 because fashion is a mirror of the wider world \u2014 everywhere else too. What are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, after all, but a rejection of America\u2019s political orthodoxy? By some lights, that amounts to revolution.<\/p>\n
On her catwalk, Mrs P. offered her own vision of a polarised world: the powerful and the weak, the rich and the poor. A fur cape was duplicated seconds later in utilitarian cotton canvas. What looked like a surgical corset gripped a perfectly tailored coat. A brocade shirt was paired with a postcard skirt. Glimpses of Prada\u2019s past were casually insinuated into the line-up, underscoring the idea that time and place are fluid.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, a stylist\u2019s hand could be detected in some of the more collaged looks, the combinations of high and low, but there were more than enough individual items that were rich with reference. When Mrs P. came across Berlin-based French artist Christophe Chemin, he\u2019d coincidentally been working on a collage of the history of women. He was responsible for the paintings in a dozen styles \u2014 echoing Renaissance masters, Pop icons, movie poster art \u2014 that added an absorbing visual texture.<\/p>\n
What I wrote after her men\u2019s collection still stands, maybe more acutely than before. So why not just run it by you one more time? \u201cMrs Prada has always been a political animal, but her politics have rarely been obvious in her work (or should we call it her art?). Her faith in fashion is, however, something quite distinct. Watching her latest collection, one thought irresistibly asserted itself: clothes make memories, memories make history.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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