The floor of the Prada showroom in Milan is the most lovely shade of violet-cream, the same colour as carpet that is rolling out world wide across the brand's stores. It's a perfect, confectionary hue for the line's SS12 collection, which recalled more than anything the decadent desserts of a 1950s diner, all lemon pie yellows, baked alaska pinks and creams, marshmallow blues, mints and a healthy dash of chocolate and strawberry.
The sweets-effect of the collection hung in colour blocks on the racks seems fitting, given Miuccia Prada's almost uncanny ability to, season after season, come up with the kind of shouldn't-but-I-will indulgences women are willing to splurge on.
This season, she delivered by designing a collection which she quipped was everything a man might want: cars and girls. It was an adaptation of a fifties muscle-motor aesthetic into Prada's tradition of quirkiness. While the comic-book car prints, racing flames and Vargas onesies (contoured into ultra-curves like the tail of a vintage Cadillac) might speak to the interests of boys, the overall result was, as it always is, something that is probably a touch too intellectualised for the tastes of your average bloke. The ladies, on the other hand, will love it.
In an interesting inversion, the slim fitting silhouettes of a greaser girl was executed in leather and emblazoned with the big, bold decals one would normally associate with flaring poodle skirts, while pleated knee length numbers had a line that was only a subtle 'A', granting the range a shape that felt far more modern than circle skirts would have.
Last summer, Prada's playful stripes proved one of the most co-opted looks to grace the runway, with the high street picking the patterns up with such speed they beat the label's own delivery dates. This year however, the brand hit on a perfect feeling summer fabric that will prove far harder for fast fashion to appropriate: lace. Slightly stiff, tightly patterned Broderie Anglais lost its little-girl implications thanks to the serious yet feminine shapes into which it was cut, whilst an applique lace fused not onto mesh, but a thick cotton that had been treated to feel like duchess satin, was a colourful, textural delight of shiny and matt surfaces. Both styles are also impossible to imitate successfully without significant expense, which makes going straight to the source a more attractive proposition.
Prada still very much hold the zeitgeist in hand, and they do it by tempering a ladylike aesthetic with a clever kind of kitsch. These are grown up clothes that still retain a sense of fun, a woman who still knows how to be a girl, which is perhaps, after all, exactly what men want too.