PRADA

This year is shaping up to be a good one for Prada. Its net income for the first half rose more than 10 per cent to $123.4m – a feat spearheaded by the husband-wife team of Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada, the granddaughter of the brand’s founder Mario Prada.

Miuccia, who is also Prada’s creative director, is taking the brand way out of its comfort zone in order to unshackle its potential and reach those commercial targets. That means doing something that it hasn’t done before. At the SS19 show, Prada sent its male models down the runway wearing very short shorts – not Thom Browne length of shorts, but in Miuccia’s words like “miniskirts for men”.

But you didn’t have to be a fashion daredevil to pull off Prada’s other looks, which included clean-cut and colourful single-vented blazers and rubber-sheened ruffle-fronted shirts.

Prada was big on accessories this year too – think trapper-style hats and bags (curiously, always slung only over the right shoulder). Miuccia, take a bow.

Prada is stepping far outside its comfort zone