Five weeks ago Miuccia Prada presented a men’s collection that took as its starting point the story of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s monstrous, rejected, lovesick antihero. In that show Prada included a smattering of women’s looks from her Pre-Fall collection, as she is wont to do: utility-strapped and pocketed cocktail frocks, crystal-embroidered shirtdresses constrained by leather harnesses, combinations of graphic rose prints, wacky lightning bolts, and loose-gauge knits. In their quirky and bold juxtapositions of pedigrees, details, and textures, those clothes were indeed “Frankensteinish” and all the more compelling for it. (She also gave Gigi a feathery shag for the night, and boy did that spark a thousand snips!) Tonight Miuccia Prada continued her exploration of Shelley’s canonical invention, this time giving him a bride (literally, on a sheath dress worn by a bleached-browed Cara Delevingne) and positioning him at the center of a larger sociocultural critique of our times, which she feels are defined by “romance and fear.”
First, one must note that it was a fearless decision on Prada’s part to show a women’s collection that did not come as a total surprise to its audience. There are many in fashion for whom the Prada show is like Christmas is to children who haven’t yet learned they can influence Santa: surprises abound! Why does the set have spiky foam floors? Why does the hair resemble Wednesday Addams’s? And who ever thought to record a violin cover of “Bad Romance”? Some people love Prada because they want to be gobsmacked, dazzled, schooled, and basically aesthetically woken up in the slumber that is Fashion Month. But those folks forget one thing: Miuccia is a serious person and one who is right now very concerned about European conflicts, wars, and the threat of war more generally. That is all she wanted to talk about postshow. And those sorts of thoughts and the creative impulses they give rise to don’t change in five weeks just because the industry prefers novelty. It’s simply not that moment.
And so, instead, we had a Prada collection that continued to posit romance in all its aesthetic gestures (lace, flowers, hearts, fairy-tale capes, and glittery red shoes) as a way to both soften and deepen the tropes of utilitarianism (uniforms, puffers, cargo details, pole climber boots, backpacks). The most successful looks had the subtlest integration of wide-eyed loveliness and lumbering dread: an off-the-shoulder party dress of rough, dry wool with a curvaceous skirt made shapelier with a massive patch pocket; a slouchy black trouser suit cinched at the waist with a vaguely mannish clasp; a compound military jacket with a nifty blue shirt and a black lace pencil skirt. For the Prada-philes among you, please note that the bags were largely framed purses, the shoes were mostly either massive and mannish or a sturdy pump in matte black or all-out sparkle, and the trendy buys probably involve 3-D flowers or pastel Muppet fur (cute in small doses).
And Prada-philes will love this collection because it was, at its core, very, very Prada. Not because there were, as ever, many great swaggering coats. Not because the dresses nodded to a demented Kim Novak or an inscrutable Eva Marie Saint. Not because there was a shoe in balletic pink with a plexi-heel, or a thick-soled brothel creeper for one of those slushy-streets, death-of-sex dates. It was very Prada because it spoke so clearly to the twin impulses that both define and daunt the Prada woman: I know what really matters and I also really love fashion. Such a beautiful, bad romance.
