At Prada, it is business not as usual
Miuccia Prada turned out clothes for power dressers as the brand declined to comment on succession rumours
A great big question mark has hung over Prada in recent months. In October, news that the listed Italian company had wrested control of certain flagship stores from the Prada family fuelled speculation of an imminent takeover. At the menswear shows in January, the front row was abuzz with talk that Raf Simons was consulting for the brand and would soon be appointed creative director of the men’s collection, Miu Miu, or even the whole shebang.
Prada declined to comment on both counts, with one executive asserting there was “nothing on the table” with Simons (a designer Miuccia Prada said she would “love” to work with in a 2016 interview).
Against such a potent cocktail of will-they-or-won’t-they, Wednesday’s show, held at the Prada Foundation complex on the second day of Milan Fashion Week, was inevitably anticlimactic. At their best, Ms Prada’s collections challenge the conventions of good taste and alter the course of fashion; other times, she serves up saleable clothes and accessories that riff on her greatest hits. Her Autumn/Winter collection was the latter, with grey wool blazers and top coats belted over car-wash skirts, sporty sandals strapped over opaque rib-knit tights, and black nylon bags in rich supply. The problem here is that the Prada customer already owns most of these.
Clothes are rarely surveyed from above, Ms Prada observed backstage — least of all at fashion shows. And so she decided to turn her venue into an Italianate courtyard, with guests gazing down at a procession of models in Oxford shirts and suit ties layered under big-shouldered blazers and other paradigms of 1980s power dressing. These were juxtaposed with elements of classic femininity — a pencil skirt, a cinched waist, a shiver of jet fringe — and Art Nouveau florals flattened on to intarsia knits and top-and-trouser co-ords. (The Vienna Secession, Austria’s version of the Art Nouveau artistic movement, was a reference point.)
Lust-worthy were a pair of capacious patent gilets in black and bubblegum pink faced with faux shearling. Prada pledged last year to phase out fur starting with this collection — hence the faux.
Last year Prada also inked a deal with L’Oréal to launch a make-up line, and what looked like metallic tech accessories were actually cosmetics compacts and minaudières strung from necks and strapped to wrists, a spokesperson confirmed, promising that more details would be revealed on Friday.
Prada’s brand is far bigger than its business, and make-up presents a significant opportunity for a company with a strong reputation for colour. As for the rumours — let’s wait and see.