prada

I love it when you can see a designer working through a single idea for a collection. To some that connote a one dimensionality, but there is nothing simple about Miuccia Prada's fall collection. Lace, S&M, death--it was all there and then some. Prada really thinks about women in context to what clothes project about gender, power, and sexuality. This season there was a slight elegiac tone but it was perverse and no way completely sad or dead on arrival. As the summer turns into fall the leaves change and the air gets colder, and in a way, the world around us dies a little bit. For fall, Prada presented clothes fit for a funeral, minus the somber, bloodless sensation one gets at such an occasion. These clothes have a coy, almost grandma-ish flair, but a strong scent of sex, which is always a pleasure for Prada to put on display.

The collection is more about details, if you ask me. What do we immediately think of when we think of black lace: a veil for a funeral, Victoria's Secret, or something that tickles the feverish fetishist in all of us? That was all true to some degree in the inherent transparency of the lacy collection, which was sexy in theory, but the just below knee length that most of the coats and dresses came in, that is typically for older women, didn't come across as a Victoria's Secret commercial. Black, nude, baby blue, and shades of orange were dominate throughout, with the nude and baby blue showing through the lace. These are colors that I think of as being wistful and plain. There was nothing plain about the severe hair and thick eyebrows on the models that made them look as tough as those hard looking boots and cuff bracelets. The shoes had a slight melancholy tone as bits of leather seem to fall away from the shoe, as if to imply that everything dies, even designer heels. The perversity in the shoes existed in stacked collars, lots of buttons, and see through dickies paired over button down blouses. The caged in feeling was present in her menswear collection in January, but at the time she said she was punishing men for the hoops women have to jump through to dress themselves, thus giving the buttons in the back of their shirts and cummerbunds that dipped into pants giving the illusion of a thong protruding. The covered up look for women seemed to be less about punishment than about being a woman in mourning choosing not to show everything, with a slight desire for something lustful to return after the passing of her love.

For a $6 billion business you would think Prada would be concerned about wearability, but it seems more and more that the presentation of her clothes is an open space for the ideas that brew around in her mind. If things progress in this clean, sexy direction, she can keep thinking out loud as much as she wants.