Considered at the forefront of fashion, Miuccia Prada turned its style upside down at the turn of the 90s.
Miuccia Prada And The Pretty Ugly
Many people consider Miuccia Prada as the pope of contemporary aesthetics. An aesthetic focused on making the ugly beautiful, a fashion that sent the concept of good tastes waltzing around a simple idea. The Pretty Ugly.
Hijacking The Styles Of Haute Bourgeoisie
When Miuccia Prada inherited the company that bears her name in 1978, the woman she had since become attached to two things. The first, she said, “I want to encourage women to fight. The second is to hijack the codes of the upper bourgeoisie.”
Because Miuccia Prada refused to see the woman as a body to be dressed to appear, the director of the house adopted her own fashion. The Prada woman has fun and diverts rather than conforms. And as for the codes of the upper bourgeoisie, it sends them waltzing with as much elegance as freedom of tone.
And Miuccia Prada has made the style of the upper bourgeoisie its favorite playground. Each Prada show is an opportunity to set up a sort of misleading mirror on codes and values that has constructed beauty in absolute terms. But the beauty that holds perfection can be a prison for the creative and inventive spirit. Worse, good taste also locks women into a role.
This is what Prada sets out to divert when it seizes materials or pieces emblematic of this social environment. Like feathers or guipure lace or chiffon, Prada never hesitates to clash elements that were previously clearly dissociated.
“Fashion has never opened up before. I initiated this, which earned me a lot of criticism. But the success of Prada comes from there.”
Geek Chic And Pretty Ugly
From 1996, Prada fashion carried an iconic aesthetic. For the spring and autumn 1996 collections, Miuccia Prada sought to write the irony around delicious fabrics but associated them with the extreme.
A snub to the rules of fashion, Prada mixed – everything, colors, prints, cut and time, in a freedom of tone that fascinated and captured a certain vision of fashion. Prada’s ugly chic was born!
Like this jacket-pants set dipped in a tapestry pattern. Already, during the Spring / Summer 1996 collection, Miuccia Prada was doing a great fashion good by scrolling through a number of prints deemed ‘ugly’ today synonymous with avant-garde.
Mix of tapestry prints, garish colors like muted avocado greens and earthy browns,Miuccia Prada challenged the conventions and ideals of good taste, giving birth to one of the most innovative concepts in contemporary fashion: the concept of Jolie Laide. The ugly becomes beautiful and the chic is therefore characterized by a touch of bad taste.
Prada-style geek chic is also a story of loose looks!
A concept that made School – Marc Jacobs or Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga owe him a lot.
True to its label, Miuccia Prada scrolls through silhouettes as surprising as they are relevant throughout the seasons. Inaugurating, in each of them, a fashionable gesture which never fails to have repercussions in other houses.
Tailors punctuated with feathers, geek details, the athleisure comfort of the Linea Rossa and a bit of old-fashioned preciousness. Many Prada gimmicks have become iconic.
Prada’s Iconic Prints And Tints
Prada gimmicks are therefore based on a palette of prints and colors.
Tapestry Prints
The prints mix and often assert themselves in Prada fashion. Unexpected mixes of tapestry prints and precious materials, stitching cuts and pop inspirations, the fashion of Miuccia Prada clashes and influences.
Tapa prints, Prada has made them its iconic, and the graphic image of its freedom. A profusion of obsolete or mundane references that brings it closer to a Pop Art approach. But Prada does well in fashion and it is to her that we owe a number of silhouettes unique to our time.
Tapestry prints rub shoulders with wools stitched with rhinestones, evening coats punctuated with fur and feathers. All wrapped in garish prints, and hues that scream even more!
The most iconic is undoubtedly the acid green, also known as Prada green.
Acid Green
In the 1980s, the Italian house Prada became a global group. Establishing itself in the four corners of the world, the house has seen its network of shops grow rapidly. London, Madrid, Tokyo, Paris…
The first “green store” opened in Milan, on Via della Spiga. Designed by architect Roberto Baciocchi. The central idea of this soon globalized project is simple: an immediately recognizable green tint. A trademark, again in opposition to gray and white, which was de rigueur at the time, Prada stores were the first to be decorated with “Prada Green”. An acid green, almost atomic, which stung pretty ugly the very refined aesthetics of the stores!
Very quickly, the favorite color of Prada became a house code. A code that also matches Prada’s silhouettes, bags and other icons. And in particular the other key house code, Poccono nylon.