For fall, Miuccia Prada staged her Miu Miu runway at Paris’ Palais d’léna, home to France’s Economic and Social Council. There was a reason: all the better to flaunt her recent partnership with the CESE by using its headquarters as a cultural and artistic center. It was also an inauguration as the collection proved to be a pleasant and pretty outing, one that also made for an engaging riposte to her main show in Milan. Instead of aiming for girlish innocence as she did there, chez Miu Miu, Prada set her sights on a more grown-up tack. But the role reversal wasn’t just about doling out womanly clothes that strike a vintage chord. Rather, Prada seemed to be making a play for adult dressing seen through the eyes of a wide-eyed kid. It explains the oversize shapes throughout, which projected a youthful vibe onto elegant-yet-prim dresses and conservative tailoring. Also furthering that agenda: the jumbo bow motif on pencil skirts and the tidy contrast-color collars that looked almost sketched on to the spare, sculpted coats and dresses. Everything came cast in a Forties filter, too, à la Mildred Pierce but gentler. There were broad, pronounced shoulders; to-the-era prints and embroideries, done in swallow and lily of the valley patterns, and fantastic frame bags, the latter in plumped-up proportions. Even the furs, beastly and tinted elsewhere on the runways, were cut from movie-glamour minks — albeit served with nontraditional accents on the shoulders and hips. The boyish blouson tops, meanwhile, styled with off-kilter baseball caps, added a nice counterpoint to the otherwise polite and ladyfied clothes. That said, things at Prada aren’t always exactly as they seem. Perhaps that’s the reason for the soundtrack of choice: Kate Bush’s “The Infant Kiss,” with its uncomfortable undertones of woman-boy lust.
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