prada flore and 70-s


The show opened on a somber note, with mini- or midi-length dresses (or tunics layered over clamdigger pants, or even knitted rompers) in shadowy blacks, inky blue, and bottle green, in boxy, rectangular shapes, deliberately cut to subvert the conventional norms of fit—bust darts that don’t quite curve the body as they are generally intended, skirt volumes that are a tad clunky and off-kilter. Even the poppy red lip and the messily teased French pleats threw off any costume-literal revisiting of the 1960s look. The second part of the collection, meanwhile, melted into duchess satin pieces in pretty sugar-almond shades of spring-bud green and blush pink.

For Miuccia, this dichotomy represented “the struggles women have between toughness and softness, the rigor followed by delicacy, and the poetic part of women.” But even those dark opening pieces were touched with lightness—a digital print of a partly blown-away dandelion clock on an oversize appliqué patch, for instance, or a sprig of Far Eastern blooms, or those sweet Courrèges daisy shapes carved out of astrakhan or sewn on as though by earnest ladies at a quilting bee—reflecting the charming handicraft spirit of the season. More tiny little buds and blooms garlanded a single bangle, dotted the top bar of cartoonish eyeglasses, and trimmed the straps and clasps of the tidy little purses in playfully conventional, old-fashioned shapes.