Although most of the spring 2014 collections recently shown in New York featured subdued shades, Prada — as usual — has gone a different route. The trend-setting Italian fashion house debuted a spring/summer collection in Milan September 19 that screams color in a wild pop-art style while offering a deeper meaning underneath.
For this show, Miuccia Prada commissioned pop art murals from street artists Miles "El Mac" Gregor, Mesa, Gabriel Specter, Stinkfish, and illustrators Jeanne Detallante and Pierre Mornet "to engage themes of femininity, representation, power and multiplicity," according to press information.
"I wanted the clothes to be so bold that people will see you but also listen," said designer Miuccia Prada.
The paintings served as a backdrop for a collection that includes larger-than-lifesize women's faces on boldly colored dresses and rainbow-patterned overcoats dotted with jewel-colored paillettes and giant sequins.
"I was fixated with the idea of women and how it is necessary that they be strong, visible, kind of fighters. I wanted the clothes to be so bold that people will see you but also listen," Prada told a reporter for The Guardian backstage.
Although some of the looks are demure (pleated skirts and rib-knit fabrics lend a schoolgirl air to some styles), much of the collection is more in-your-face, with heavily sequined bras worn on the outside of coats or in fabric incorporated onto the bodice of dresses. Matching footless rugby socks show off jeweled flats and rubber-tipped sandals that are destined to become best-sellers next summer.
Girl power, indeed.
A look from the Prada spring summer 2014 collection.
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