"It was kind of conservative," said Miuccia Prada of her latest menswear collection, "because I thought that was the only new thing possible." It is a testament to the designer's skilful and relentless boundary-pushing that such a deliberately contrary declaration was met with sage nodding backstage.
For this is the label that sets the agenda at Milan fashion week. If Prada says that classic clothes with a whiff of the early 70s and a sombre colour palette are modern, her track record indicates that she will be proven right.
The deliberate awkwardness which defines the brand was evident as soon as guests arrived at the show on Sunday night. The catwalk set featured a cobalt-coloured ankle-deep pool with a brown carpet at the water's edge. Carpets and pools aren't a natural pairing but in the hands of Prada the set looked sleek.
If guests were expecting the Prada pool to feature hunks in trunks they were in for a disappointment as the brand sent out a collection heavy on car coats, denim and shrunken knitwear. "The pool is a classic for summer," said Prada backstage. "It was a joke and an irony on what was classic."
The clothes themselves were what could be termed sombre occasion wear. The sort of clothes that feature in family photos with curved corners from the late 60s and early 70s. Brown car coats, moss-green trousers neither skinny nor wide which stopped at the ankle, shrunken V-neck jumpers, buttoned-up blue shirts and no ties. The colour palette of Wes Anderson's film costumes and charity shop silhouettes, as worn by that family friend with the side-parted, slicked hair in that old photo.
But to dismiss this as a retro collection that could be aped with charity shop bargains is to miss the point. It wasn't about recreating a trend from a bygone era, it was about taking classic and familiar products, injecting a touch of haute awkwardness and making undesirable clothes desirable.
Take the chunky visible parallel stitching on the pockets and trouser seams, which were reminiscent of cut-out paper dolls' wardrobes. Some featured real pockets, some merely meant to look like pockets – the "stitches" were actually embroidery. Stitching isn't usually seen as desirable but nothing is obvious when it comes to Prada.
This was a collection that provided a wide-angle view of the Prada brand – its lack of rules, its agenda-setting, its international scope and its focus on defining moods not throwaway trends.
Sunday's catwalk also featured womenswear – buttoned-through dresses and heeled loafers. It is a tactic increasingly used by designers to showcase in-between, resort collections that make up the bulk of a brand's sales. But backstage, Prada dismissed the notion that the womenswear amounted to a resort collection, saying: "I don't like resort."
Indeed, the designer is not one for rules. Nor is she constrained by seasons – coats were often paired with sandals and bare feet, showing scant regard for practicalities and even seasons. But when you consider that Prada is an international brand selling to various climates at the same time it makes sense. Besides, coats and boots doesn't look half as modern.
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