Yesterday evening Italy won a key European Champiopnship match against England, but there are currently very few things to be happy about in the country.
Economy is going down the drain, unemployment rates are constantly rising while politicians are constantly stealing and keeping on cutting pensions and culture funds rather than their own wages, not to mention the damages caused by the recent earthquakes.
It was only natural then for Miuccia Prada to take refuge from confusion, chaos and uncertainty in a print-free, balanced and almost too simple collection.
The design silhouettes were very basic since only the pants were slightly flared and the collection included two-button suits, polos with contrasting collars and borders (inspired to the borders in Roman and Greek garments apparently), lightweight squarish coats and short-sleeved jackets.
The palette revolved around wine, black, white and navy with splashes of pink and green and all the designs were accessorised with basic two-tone plain flat sandals and geometric bags.
The same garments reappeared also in the women’s resort line that Prada presented during the same show.
Yet in all this simplicity, repetitiveness and gender oblivion with both male and female models walking down the runway, there were signs of overlapping inspirations and references.
Miuccia Prada is a cinematic designer and the two-tone headbands sported with fur coats called to mind nerdish looks seen in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (View this photo).
Yet that wasn't all: the key elements to dissect the collection were the bands of contrasting colours inside the trouser legs replicated by the geometric lines of light projected on the runway and creating intersecting paths that ended in a white anonymous ramp that allowed the models to swiftly disappear behind the scenes.
Geometric lines were all the rage in fashion during the '60s, with designers from André Courrèges to Pierre Cardin employing them to create the space age looks that became so influential in later decades.
This Prada collection isn't strictly "space age", but it displays some references to uniforms that could be donned by both men and women (usually men and women in sci-fi films are dressed in the same practically functional clothes...) and therefore indirectly hint at a world where they will be no difference between sexes at least clothes-wise (and where there will hopefully be no need for so many catwalk shows...).
Yet Prada's vision of the future is certainly not intergalactic nor it suggests new technological advancements in fabrics, clothes and accessories.
When you think about it, though, maybe Miuccia's own words explained it all: the designer claimed this collection was about simplicity and equality, but there were simplicity and equality in futuristic and dystopic novels and films such as The 10th Victim.
In the latter the main characters, clad in black and white clothes characterised by geometric and graphic bold lines, live in a world in which human beings are allowed to kill each other in a sort of universal hunting game.
Though this reading is maybe a bit too intense, who knows, it could actually reflect what Miuccia Prada had in mind (the '60s soundtrack featuring Brigitte Bardot's "Contact" with its sci-fi video was maybe another element that hinted towards this explanation...).
Maybe Miuccia purposely wanted to leave behind her power fuelled Autumn/Winter 2012 menswear collection with famous actors such as Gary Oldman and Willem Dafoe modelling the clothes, to remind people that a dystopian, uncertain and maybe anxiety-inducing future can hide also behind seemingly safe clothes.
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I love the designs. It's a bit simple for some people but not for me. I think it's great, I'd definitely wear one of those.
Posted by: Zentai Suits | July 04, 2012 at 04:49 AM