Prada's Gray Elegy
MILAN — MILAN “I was thinking about a black and white movie — and gray suits,” Miuccia Prada said backstage Monday, before she seated her audience in a long tunnel with a police movie script writ large on the walls.
The opening outfits were indeed gray suits but in different shades, and with layers of perforated fabrics that moved from rakish hats, to athletic mesh tops, down to trousers and shoes.
The mistress of sly sobriety was in fine form as she played with proportions and focused on sports materials but never swerved from her concept of the colorless. Or, to be more accurate, she turned the dullness of gray, from dove to anthracite, into a shaded palette. Graphics included the show’s checkerboard floor, check suiting fabric and monochrome Liberty-style prints.
While Milan designers have offered global travel as fashion’s escape route, the Prada man seemed bound to the world of work but with formal wear worn oh-so-lightly — especially when the mesh layers were cut away brutally at the arms. The tip-tap of typing on the show’s soundtrack suggested the office world of yesteryear. But Ms. Prada’s version of workwear was uncompromisingly modern.
suzy menkes // nytimes.com