Prada RTW Spring 2013 Milan Fashion Week

Prada RTW Spring 2013 -  Beauty -Power - Fragility - Artifice

Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada, Over the years, has addressed them all on her runway. For her spring collection, she sought to reconcile two oppositional characteristics of womanhood: “toughness and the poetic part,” she explained backstage. “I tried to mix them together, because this is mainly what women have to deal with in reality. The clothes are the expression of this impossible dream.”

These clothes were neither overtly romantic nor wistful, the shapes stark to the point of severity. But the first look out, a short black dress, was emblazoned with an off-center panel decorated with two white long-stemmed flowers that looked drawn in chalk. They might have been an ode to Flower Power Pop or to a third-grade art class. Then followed a parade of similarly crafted suits, dresses, jackets over knee shorts, their printed and appliquéd flowers providing sweet counterpoint to the austere shapes. One saw references to traditional Japanese kimonos, hakamas and footwear, as well as hints of Prada’s ongoing fascination with lingerie. Color started to work its way in: a dark green coat, a lone navy dress, splashes of red, and then, full-on pastels, all icy pink, green and girly.