A fashion designer usually realises if he or she has done something right when, at the end of a catwalk show, prominent journalists are spotted rushing towards the exit to go and write their reports.
It is indeed the excitement of having seen something beautiful and cleverly made, of an idea tackled in an intelligent way, that inspires and prompts you to immediately write down what you saw.
At the end of Prada’s catwalk show there were quite a few of such critics running out of the venue and you instantly knew from their faces, hurried pace and general excitement that the reviews were going to be good.
Prada’s Spring/Summer 2011 collection was indeed an optimistic, yet well-balanced and perfectly styled mix of colours.
I must admit, though, that I found it difficult not to laugh till I cried at some of the subtle references Miuccia cleverly scattered here and there.
In fact it would be apt to say that it’s not the devil that wears Prada, but it’s Miuccia that is the devil. Why? Well, let’s discover it together.
The collection started where the menswear show had ended. The first designs in acid orange, electric blue and dark green cotton were indeed directly inspired by the hospital scrubs we saw on the menswear runway in June and so were the (accident-free) striped platform shoes with coloured rubber and natural rope soles, though, for the women’s wardrobe, they had been reinvented in a higher and more colourful version.
New inspirations were introduced through fur stoles in neon colours or in black and white stripes with pink or blue tails, imagine a fox or raccoon on acid and you will get an idea (by the way, don’t try to steal that old fur stole from the family trunk and dye it by yourself, because you would never achieve the Prada results…).
Then baroque appliquéd motifs in which the traditional cherubs had been replaced by cartoonish monkeys started appearing on black and orange/blue/green/grey stripy dresses (with occasional pie-crust ruffled collars) while striped dresses and suits were matched with striped sombreros and here’s where the devil stepped in.
I’m sure Miuccia Prada read at some point Michel Pastoureau’s book The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes.
The author, an archivist at the Sorbonne, comes up with a fascinating theory in this volume, analysing the negative connotations of vertically or horizontally placed colours in fashion in Western societies.
Before connoting freedom and playfulness or being connected with revolutionary meanings, striped clothes were often used throughout history to identify society’s outcasts, from jugglers to prostitutes, slaves, servants and criminals.
In Medieval paintings the devil himself is at times depicted wearing stripes. So, was Miuccia trying to be ironic? If she was, well, her subtle irony didn't stop here.
To complement the monkey baroque theme, banana print skirts and shirts started arriving, and, at this point, mistaken also by the models’ wavy hairstyles, most fashion critics started having visions of Joséphine Baker.
Yet, a white dress with a black silhouette of a woman dancing among colourful baroquish swirls with a pineapple on her head showed Miuccia Prada was channelling Carmen Miranda singing “The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat” in Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here.
In fact the swirls embellishing dresses and sunglasses weren’t really any references to Baroque architectures, but they seemed lifted from the decorations on the white organs carried by moustachioed organ grinders, complete with monkeys and hats in the film (first embedded clip).
The curlicues also referenced in some ways the set decorations by Thomas Little, such as the swirling strawberry leaves in the background at the end of the first Carmen Miranda clip I'm embedding in this post.
Besides the banana print ruffle-hemmed skirts called to mind the costumes of the girls dancing on Banana Island in the film and so did Miuccia’s banana earrings (will we all be wearing banana and fruit on our ears come next Spring? Probably yes…).
In a way also the stripes may have a Carmen Miranda derivation: remember some of her shirts and skirts in Walter Lang’s 1941 film Weekend in Havana? (No? Check out the second embedded clip).
After all Miuccia Prada likes history, but she also likes movies and she claimed this collection was inspired in some ways by musicals.
Cinematic references aside, there was also a lot of irony in the banana prints.
I couldn’t indeed stop thinking how well an Italian fashion house has portrayed through a print a political situation, the print almost hinting at Berlusconi’s Banana Republic.
I can't wait to see the banana print entering the wardrobe of some of the women in Berlusconi’s government.
In fact could Miuccia maybe come up with a banana print uniform for the members of the Italian government?
"Designer politics" aside, the very end of the catwalk show was more inspired by jazz nightclubs, the 20s and Joséphine Baker, with models in simple black dresses matched once again with colourful fur stoles in bright pop colours or stripes and shoes in silver leather, intrecciato motifs or chequered heels.
Bold? Invigorating? Optimistic? Extravagant yet controlled? Describe it as you want, but what's for sure is that with this collection Miuccia Prada proved once again she knows how to get an idea, analyse it cleverly and apply it to a collection in an almost effortless ways. After all, she’s the "Devil in the Tutti Frutti Earrings".
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