The Baracuta jacket that Elvis Presley wears in King Creole is one of his more iconic looks, but it's not necessarily an item you'd attach to a collection of Resort-oriented womenswear—unless, of course you were Miuccia Prada, whose wide-ranging assault on fashion orthodoxy takes no prisoners. The Baracuta, with its contrast yoke, outlined here in studs, is a foundation stone of her latest collection. She paired it with a pale blue cowboy shirt, June Carter to the spirit of Johnny Cash, who hovered provocatively over the menswear she showed in June. Miuccia also harked back to that show's kooky golf subtext with loud florals. Cropped, cuffed cotton jeans in the print might have been the kind of piece a golf widow would've worn on a never-ending weekend afternoon in the early sixties when her husband (wearing matching pants) was on the links. The foulards and caps could also have been lifted from his closet.
Such touchstones were only the most left-field reference points in a lineup that decade-skipped willfully from a prim floral dress with a doubled Peter Pan collar, shirred waist, and pleated skirt to an entirely sheer black lace piece that managed to be both widow-worthy and fetish-fabulous at the same time. Along the way, there were forties-style crepe dresses with draped waists and narrow three-quarter sleeves, and a Mad Men group of bouclé separates in ice-creamy shades of pink, orange, and yellow. The styling—cardigans worn on the shoulders, buttoned at the throat—was proper in the way a Hitchcock blonde is proper, i.e., severely unhinged. Which means—as is the case with Prada collections generally—these clothes threaten to infiltrate dreams with their seductive off-ness.
