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Carnaby St. Chic at Prada
By Godfrey Deeny
Photos by Gruber-FWD
MILAN, Jan 15, 2003 /FWD/ --- There's clothes to wear and food for thought, and the collection Miuccia Prada showed Monday in Milan was very much the latter.
Frankly, most of the men attending the fall winter 2003 men's collection presented in Prada's cement gray headquarters probably had a hard time imagining wearing the outfits Miuccia sent out on the catwalk. And yet, these clothes not only summed up the dominant mood in Milan, they will also likely influence men's fashion more than any other show this season.
The designer's regard, like so many here in Italy, was focused on Britain. But where most of her peers are looking back to early '80s, Miuccia's mind was centered on Carnaby Street and specifically on Holliday & Brown, a forgotten brand from Burlington Arcade famed for its colorful, libertine prints that burst forth in'60s Swinging Britain.
And unlike so many other designers, who lift ideas from an earlier epoch and call it sampling or a "homage," Miuccia, to her credit, was completely up front about the source.
"I didn't want to update anything. We took the same fabrics as is and used them as we discovered them. That seemed to me to be the honest thing to do," Miuccia told FWD backstage.
The bright exotic prints with hints of exploding plants and psychedelic dreams turned up in ties, funky shirts, satchels, toilet bags, umbrellas and even piping throughout the show, which was in tune with Prada's dominant idea of men in the past five years - sexy nerds.
Suits were cut high to finish at the hip, peg-leg pants finished three inches above the ankles and ties ended half way down the chest. You remember the goofy dude who scored first in chemistry, never got laid and ended up owning the biomedical company worth $100 million? These were ideal clothes for his son, as was the soundtrack, an absurd mix of electronic burps and belches by sound architect Frederic Sanchez.
Like a lot of Italians influenced by English cultural movements, Miuccia mixed up eras and classes in her show - lower-middle class car coats, rude boys' pork pie hats and gents' city suits appeared on the same model. Though the color choices were sometimes eccentric and the silhouettes unforgivingly tight, this collection will be widely aped. And the shoes were, as ever, great - from the pointy fake crocodile lace-ups to the revamped pigskin wingtips.
Asked about the UK themes, Miuccia replied, "I haven't visited London of late but I have been there in my imagination."
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