Business Of Fashion – 17 juin 2018<\/p>\n
Miuccia Prada built her collection on blazers and coats and then frosted the familiar with a layer of excitement \u2014 including a psychedelic subtext, a bit of flower power and a sensational m\u00e9lange of found imagery.<\/p>\n
BY TIM BLANKS<\/p>\n
MILAN, Italy \u2014 After her show on Sunday night, Miuccia Prada insisted she prefers the most basic, banal words to describe what she does. No fancy-schmancy intellectualising. Just words like \u201csimple\u201d or \u201csexy\u201d or \u201craw.\u00a0\u00bb The Prada twist is, of course, that nothing is ever really simple.<\/p>\n
For Miuccia\u2019s dream of \u201cnormal that looks exciting\u201d to come true, you have to have normal to begin with. Maybe that\u2019s why she built her new collection on blazers and coats, classic in camel and grey flannel, less so in suede and chambray. Then she was able to frost the familiar with a layer of what could pass for excitement. It was most obvious in a psychedelic subtext, a bit of flower power, a sensational m\u00e9lange of found imagery on Paul Hameline\u2019s turtleneck (rumour had it that Miuccia herself had mixed up this psych stew).<\/p>\n
But there were also frisson-ish echoes of the \u201cugly\u201d prints that made Prada\u2019s name a few decades ago, the same ones Miuccia resuscitated in the cruise collection she presented in New York in May. And she said she imagined the belted and buckled short shorts that ruled the show as the male equivalents of May\u2019s miniskirts, though they were also ultimate twink attire, stirring up long-buried memories of a prelapsarian era in gay porn.<\/p>\n
So there was actually SEX in the show. Frederic Sanchez\u2019s soundtrack played Air\u2019s \u201cSexy Boy\u201d as the models made their final march. It illuminated the curious challenge in this strange brew. Miuccia claimed that she was ultimately after \u201ca new elegance\u201d, something that honoured sport and street (so many grabby, sporty bits and pieces in the collection, anchored by fabulous footwear) while also transcending them.<\/p>\n
Reflect on the way she\u2019s covered menswear in the past and you\u2019ll get a pretty clear idea of how she feels about the male of the species. She does like to deball him, emphasise the vulnerability rather than the masculinity. And why on earth not? Toxic testosterone is paving the ghastly cul-de-sac into which human civilisation is veering. So Miuccia\u2019s response \u2014 not for the first time \u2014 was to play up a man\u2019s feminine side: a ruffle, a purse, and always those \u00ab\u00a0sexy\u00a0\u00bb shorts.<\/p>\n
It was also tantalising to imagine the huge trapper hats that accessorised almost every look as some sly acknowledgement of the creeping Putin effect on the West. Miuccia\u2019s political sensibility was, after all, shaped in the crucible of Communist activism in 1970\u2019s Milan. Unfortunately for that theory, those hats had already dressed up the New York show, where they were inspired by an image of a Galliano look once sported by Kate Moss. In this latest incarnation, Miuccia said she liked the impression the trapper hat created of a huge head tottering on a skinny male body. (OK, that\u2019s vulnerable-ish.)<\/p>\n
And so to the set: raw concrete walls draped in sheets of translucent plastic, seating made up of inflatable plastic cubes, originally designed by Verner Panton in the early 1960s but only now produced for sale. An intangible environment, scarcely helped by the geographic coordinates printed on the floor. Apparently, they were for \u201cremote places.\u00a0\u00bb We were not to know where we were. And I\u2019m not sure that Miuccia knew either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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