Prada’s Spring 1999 presentation opened with a flurry of athletic looks and fanny packs that seemed to bear little relation to the exotic skins and mirror-strewn looks that closed the show. But there was a thread: Sports were an inspiration, Prada said at the time. “We have these evening dresses with mirrors, she explained, “and under there is this man’s shorts for swimming. So it’s mixed up in this way.” In the catalog accompanying the Met’s “Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations” exhibition, the designer offered further insights into this memorable season.
“The pieces that closed my Spring 1999 collection were embroidered with broken mirrors. They represented my interpretation of hippie fashions,” she said. “At the time there was a revival of hippie style, so the entire collection was an ironic comment on the current trend for hippie fashions. . . . My collection included all the cliché’s of hippie fashions such as mirrors and flowers, but totally destroyed them at the same time, in reality, it was the least hippie collection imaginable.”
