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With her design profile firmly in place, Prada is starting to alter it. "I know the moment of danger," she says. "It comes when they look to you for one thing only. Then when the fashion changes, they go away." The spring collection, shown in Milan last month, is identifiably Prada, but there are changes. The dropped waistlines are still around, but the chic, skinny belts are gone. So is some of the minimalist severity. "I'm tired of retro; I'm tired of chic," says the designer. Instead she uses color--but not loud color--more than she ever has and even indulges in pretty floral prints.
The new Miu Mius are even more of a departure. Almost all the materials used are synthetics. "It's a joke--right design, wrong fabric," Miuccia cries, running her hand through a powder blue Jackie-style polyester sleeveless sheath. The punch line? The fastenings are Velcro. Stretch materials--nylon, gabardine, a georgette that looks like organza--are dominant in the collection.
The casual observer might call the costumes sexy, but Prada calls them "uniforms," for work, shopping, kiddie coping, socializing--the service roles of a woman's life. There are tops that clearly resemble lab coats, but if these are uniforms, they are very lighthearted ones.
There is even a mildly subversive touch. Some of the skinny, tired-looking models who wear them have very short blond hair and bear a more than passing resemblance to Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby. Purposely the hair is not quite groomed and the garish lipstick is mildly askew. Perhaps some of these busy women are not quite coping. Or maybe it's just as the designer said: They're bad girls.
--With reporting by David E. Thigpen/New York