Prada -- The Thrill of the New
By Godfrey Deeny
Photos by Gruber-FWD
MILAN, Oct 2, 2002/ FWD/ --- Whatever else you can say about Miuccia Prada, the fashion
she designs have that startling sense of the truly original.
The Prada spring-summer 2003 collection she sent out in the house’s Milan headquarters may
not have been her greatest ever, and it had little of the high-voltage sex appeal of her
fall-winter show, but it did had the thrill of the new.
Not that the show didn’t reference other eras, most obviously the late sixties.
Yet the clothes themselves felt powerfully fresh, more demure than we might have expected
after last season’s mesh and sex mood, and designed for a brainy, self-assured woman.
The opening was dominated by a series of seemingly quilted satin looks in orange, bedroom
pink and fuchsia.
Gisele Bundchen looked particularly fresh and formidable in a bright green satin wrap skirt,
cut just above the knee like everything in Milan this season, and worn with a tiny olive
singlet.
Miuccia also dreamed up a look that will influence many, wet suit style jackets made of
chunky cotton and edged with gross grain that looked sexy and savvy.
Also impressive were line jacquard Capri pants paired with singlets and a series of beautiful
white shirts, part Chinese grand dame, part high-powered surgeon that were flattering with
just the right degree of flash.
We could perhaps have done without some of the hotpants; the models clearly didn’t enjoy
wearing them, but this is a small complaint in a clever statement about how to be stylist
while avoiding being stiff.
The Prada footwear, still the most influential of any fashion house anywhere, was especially
impressive and featured ballerina slippers with cut-out sides and ankle straps in blue suede
and silver and some wonderful silver wedges and pumps, many of them covered with plastic
jewelry.
Plastic flowers, appliques, faux jewelry and parallelograms also showed up on midnight
blue skirts, and a series of seven white dresses that ended the show.
The gals felt like they had just danced off a podium in "Soul Train" or "Top of the Pops."
Post show, Miuccia explained that she added much of plastic sixties elements "at the last
minute. Well not quite the last minute. But we did stay up until four in the morning."
"Overall I wanted my fashion to be sexy but not banal, never banal," she added.
Banal it wasn’t.
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