knee

“I was terrified,” said Miuccia Prada. “I wanted to take on the taboo of sweetness, which is one of the greatest qualities in women. But if you are not aggressive, too? How can that work, for a woman?” Miuccia Prada isn’t really happy—or fully herself as a designer—unless she’s exploring contradictions and burning through to new positions as a feminist. Her hot clash of intellectual impulses roared up the runway as a collection about cars and women, which, of course, is stereotypical, sexist shorthand for the way dumb men brag about the two things as if they’re trophies. A joke, of course, because when Miuccia is this revved up, it’s always about putting women in the driver’s seat.

The set was a garage—foam cars, fake oil slicks, and paint stains on the floor—not that one needed to get over-involved with scenery to understand that this Prada collection was both one of the most satisfyingly rounded and urgently desirable for years. Why? It’s in that edgy, teetering balance between an undercurrent of slutty sexuality and the ladylike hauteur that is the pure essence of Prada. The girls, walking out with greased hair pulled back with bobby pins, wore a wardrobe that, as Miuccia Prada intended, took on sugary pastels, Swiss lace, and tons of feminine pleating and car-print silks merged with hot-rod iconography in leather appliquéd skirts and shoes with 3-D spurs flaming from the heels.

On another level, this collection was also a return to the controlled, knee-length silhouettes and bourgeois taste-level first set out in the nineties. “I want to do what I really like,” said Miuccia as she stood backstage after the show, receiving sustained applause from the models and audience alike. The thrill was the feeling that there was something so authentically personal in this show. The renditions of antique jewelry (crystal drop earrings dangling from flowered studs, faux-antique necklaces, and jeweled belts) looked like versions of the pieces the designer wears herself. Yet it was far from a complacent round-up of her greatest hits. Instead, her uses of color—combinations of burgundy with cornflower blue, coral and yellow, bottle-green and pink—were feats she never wanted to pull off in the monochrome nineties. And what clinches it? The overriding fact that, for all her engagement in concept, color, print, and decoration, this is also a collection which is calculated to be accessible. “There are basically no dresses,” she pointed out. “They are all pieces, combined in a realistic way.”

伦敦坦波利在2013早春度假系列之中，塑造了一系列让人尖叫的女性化形象，散发着航海装独有的浪漫吸引力，从精致的亮色缎面Max长裙i与淑女气的鞋面装饰，到以蕾丝和透视拼接打造的Knee-Length及膝A字裙，材质闪亮悬垂肌理细致，钩插技法蜿蜒曲折，细腻的基本色与松适轮廓，营造出系列出其不意的丰富度，交替冲击观者的视觉感受。
廓形方面，结构松散却又严谨，面料优雅地游离于身体之上，颇有几分jane Birkin的随性法式气息。色彩和面料方面，象牙色、朱砂色香槟色和翡翠绿都是其他品牌少有用到的，绸缎、棉麻纺、真丝、雪纺、蕾丝与塔夫绸也基本上把实用的轻盈面料一网打尽，再加上宽檐帽、楔形鞋和卖相超级好的水钻珠宝配饰......2013早春的销售大战，想必坦波利伦敦是做好准备了。