Antonio Calanni/Associated Press A look from the spring 2011 Prada show in Milan.
The world can always use a little more glamour, and that was essentially the underlying message at the Prada spring 2011 show here in Milan tonight, set as it was on a raised runway covered in steel mesh. But this is Prada, and no one is more questioning of glamour — and the banality of luxury — than Miuccia Prada.
So she tossed glamour a banana peel.
Start with the fact that the clothes were all in Japanese cotton, from the suits to the black, ruffle-neck dresses that closed the show, and the shapes were comprehensibly basic — almost a uniform. The palette swings from Seuss to rugby, from sweet to jock. The models’ pinheads evoke the 1920s, with silver-blue eye shadow, yet they have thick, masculine brows. They’re carrying fox fur stoles, some striped like a tiger’s tail, and monkeys are scrambling up the sides of some of the dresses, a gesture as silly as a night club swizzle stick.
Backstage, Ms. Prada, who had on a gray pullover with a checked skirt and a pair of dangling banana earrings, offered musicals as a reference, but it was perhaps easier and simpler to see glamour, and the contrast to masculine uniforms, like the suit or the athletic shirt. What I liked, aside from the color, was the use of cotton, albeit some very special Japanese kinds. Fendi also had lots of cotton — not technical stuff, not chiffon imitating nylon. And no hard edges. Baroque monkeys probably appeal less to Ms. Prada’s sense of humor than to her appreciation of history, and her way of bringing it forward in fashion.
I also liked the last few dresses in the show — black cotton with a pie-crust ruffle at the neck and elbow-length sleeves. It’s the little black dress revised.
(Source: www.runway.blogs.nytimes.com )