It would be highly unlikely if Miuccia Prada wasn’t aware of this particularly strange, vicious world that is unfolding around us. And as much as she understands that, she also appreciates the necessity of escape. Distilling the point: Mrs. P. sure knows how to stage a rave. Years ago, when Miu Miu opened in London, she threw an all-nighter at the In and Out Club. She danced wildly with her husband, real diamonds strung wantonly through her hair. The essence of that evening came round to haunt us again tonight, when she launched her Miu Miu Resort collection and her very first perfume for the brand in a full-on party atmosphere that might have been a raging distraction for the professionals at hand but was a stone-gone blast for everyone else in the place.
There was something Gatsby-esque about the whole presentation. The models pranced around an elevated gantry, way untouchable, dazzle from afar. The dropped waists and banker-stripe shirts said pre-Crash 1920s and 1990s, the tiny shifts with their scoops of embroidery said 1980s. The perforations were purest 21st-century lace. The sense of dancing on the lip of a volcano was intense. Where will these extreme, beautiful, technical clothes end up? That’s not a consideration for the people who will be buying them.
—Tim Blanks
