Milan Fashion Week

Prada, Spring/Summer '09 (scroll down to read the review)
Prada
Trussed up in 18 cm high platform heels, skirts below the knee, hair in a wavy, glossy chignon and faces painted, Miuccia Prada’s women were pure fetish. There was fragility in the femininity when a number of these painted ladies came tumbling down off their twin towering shoes, but in a way it added to the perversion. The way the shoes, with their ballerina-sock insets and platforms forced models to walk was pure fetish, a kind of dare to wear, in order to achieve a perfect vision of femininity.

Straps or ribbons with a punk or bondage feel (even if in grosgrain) pulled and ruched hems, waists and cuffs, with parkas falling off the shoulder, dresses folded down to expose matching bras, and skirts caught on the side to show knickers.

Metallic threads were engineered into fabrics that were either couture-like, basic such as jersey, or printed with snake skin, shown crumpled and creased, towards or away from the body. A play on proportion - long and lean with oddly cropped tops - was a development of the men’s collection shown in June. The genius here is in the mix of references, so muddled it’s almost impossible to decipher where they begin, but that's what makes it so new and so Prada.