David Neville and Marcus Wainwright's vision for SS12 is all about the styling - cross-functional editorialism, leisure clashed against formality, looks of contradiction with no particular place to be.
Thus a royal blue blazer, whose piped contrast edging and apparent texture evokes a Chanel boucle (in #6 she gives a nod to bikerjacketism too), teamed with a white chiffon shirttop casual at her bateau neck, formal at her mannish shirt tail hemline under which a bandeau and spaghetti halter bikini in tangerine neoprene, forms a look whose contradictory themes have an antecedent - Prada's SS10 'business to beach' collection.
Miuccia explained that collection as being for the way we live today. Of course not everyone enjoys a life without functional sartorial boundaries. Should you have chosen to spend your time within the confines of a bank, school, lawfirm or library you are probably not at liberty Monday to Friday 9 to 5 to show a meshtop and a bikini under your suit. And, welded to the perpetual hamsterwheel of conventional time-space-function memes, you're unlikely to have the lifespace to be able to imagine doing so any place, any time. You could pickout a piece here and a piece there - a jacket for the office, a bikini for the beach. But that would be to miss the point - entirely.
David and Marcus played slightly wider than just the business-beach mash up. Since 2010 we've had the lady deconstructed movement (Kane, Proenza Schouler, Fendi). And this season we're a lot about the urban and the sports reference. Hence tropes of 'lady' formality - a dress probably twee on it's own - undercut with something street casual - a jogging bottom. Occasionwear vs sports/streetwear.
And if you can't initially imagine where you might possibly self-style ie a hoodie shirtdress with a boyfriend blazer perhaps, when you reflect that it could be because you're sartorially imprisoned within the confines of functional expectation: the linear determinism of role-place-dress; the idea of contradictory looks, living without boundaries, cross-functional/non-functional dressing might grow on you too.
image - opening look Prada SS10 courtesy of Style.com
I don't dislike it, I like several of the looks and in particular the hood flowy thingees and the overall athletic vibe, but I agree that it is unfocused and at times seemed like an assemblage of looks sent down a runway which I am not always so harsh about if it is the result of inexperience or enthusiasm, but here it comes off as if the budget for models and/or the soundtrack drove the number of looks and editing and coherence were afterthoughts.