Prada Bares Her Soul
Prada, by Miuccia Prada, spring/summer 2013, in Milan.
By SUZY MENKES
Published: September 20, 2012
MILAN — In the most personal and soulful collection she has ever done at Prada , Miuccia Prada opened her womanly heart, using that most female of symbols, the flower, but in a powerful, modern way.
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Flower heads perked up on the chests of short black dresses, breaking the straight lines of flat kimono-folded fabrics. On the models’ feet might be a more potent symbol of the girly style: flat shoes with shiny silver socks, fastened with a bow. Or the flowers appeared on transparent purses and eye-glass frames.
Slowly, very slowly, the designer worked in color — peach, green or red, usually with a shiny satin surfaces — except when coats were deep-pile fur, with the color of the red flowers running down like bleeding hearts.
“Very sensual, deeply feminine,” Ms. Prada said. “It’s about feelings. There are two opposites — rectangular shapes, with folds, very geometric; with the flower as a symbol, of poetry, sentiment, community — those things that are always struggles in the life of women.”
This overt questioning of self was so emotional that the audience, seated behind the brutal black pillars along the runway, was cheering before a smiling Ms. Prada appeared.
The show clothes were not pretty — more plain or even drab. Although a stole wrapped round the shoulders might reveal bared arms and a bra, or shorts under coats had the familiar Prada frisson of perversity.
The handwork, although difficult to fathom on the catwalk, included what looked like speckles of printed and painted colors.
The show played out to the mournful voice of Megumi Satsu, singing in French in the early 1980s about love and about suicide. The sound, like Prada’s vision, seemed like a hymn to deep feeling and womanly grace.
