Playful Prada takes Nineties at a gallop

AS THE fashion f set disembarked from their SUVs SUV outside Prada’s Manhattan HQ, the sweet-sour sw smell of horses stabled next ne door – the same ones that schlep around aro carriage loads of tourists in search of their Sex and the City moment – unmistakably hit the nostrils.

One can ca see why the medley appealed to Miuccia Prada. She has never followed foll the crowd. Follow the building is i more her style. Yet until now she’d never staged a show here.

Her last, las in Milan, was dark, literally and metaphorically, meta but this one, Resort 18, 18 was sunny and playful. It fizzed with wit textures, lengths, curious colour combinations co and patterns – notably those th golden-era geometrics.

There were w ruffle-trimmed miniskirts and slim trousers with matching cropped jackets. j Coats with low-slung half belts were sliced from suede, tweedy wools w with trompe l’oeil seams. There Th were cobalt tights streaked with w sequins, block-heeled patent slingbacks, sli leather “sweaters” – plus a p point of view the diametric opposite of o the voluminous silhouettes dominating dominatin fashion. And there was a moment when w the nods to the Nineties coalesced into a stab of nostalgia with oversized brocade trapper hats, partially inspired i by a trip to Russia and partly by Stephen Klein’s famous 1993 portrait port of Kate Moss.

This w was not without its nails-onblackboard blackboar moments (beige stretch hipsters). But there was plenty that was straightforwardly straig beautiful. And sometimes sometime that’s enough.