Art-á-Porter: Miuccia Prada, the good taste of the bad taste

In his “Aesthetics of Ugliness” (1853), German philosopher Karl Rosenkranz wrote about the essentiality of repulsiveness to “keep our appetites alive” and to comprehend beauty. It truly seems that this could be the lifelong motto of Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada. One of the few women to ever lead a major 'maison,' she based her accomplishments in this industry on combinations of colors, materials and styles that no other designer has ever been able to successfully emulate.

Prada’s Spring 1996 Ready-to-Wearcollection is a perfect example of a show truly capturing the essence of Miuccia as a fashion designer. Up until that point, colors like tan brown, bronze or avocado green had been absent from the catwalks for a couple of decades, ever since the Mod look had gone out of fashion. For this collection, however, Miuccia Prada decided to adopt that very color palette that most people considered ugly and outdated. Models like Kate Moss and Shalom Harlow graced the catwalk wearing ochre tailleurs decorated with grid-like patterns or dresses in bronze satin. The designer even committed what might be one of the worst fashion crimes: She matched light blue with dark brown hues. What amplified this initial effect of apparent ugliness were the shoes worn by the models. Although flashy, ultra-feminine heels were very 'en vogue' at the time, Prada had all models wear chunky sandals, which were everything but gracious.

Miuccia Prada has become an icon in the fashion world because of her willingness to question traditional beauty standards. In little time, she managed to not only make other people appreciate her unique spin on designs but also to impose her view as what was 'cool.' Her challenge to traditional standards in the world of fashion in Prada’s Spring 1996 Ready-to-Wear collection could be compared to the successful attempt made by Cubist artists to rework figurative art. This is not only true because of their similarly rebellious attitude but also because of the similar color palette employed by both Prada and the Cubists.

Some of the coats worn by Prada's models on the runway featured prints with green and brown squares that notably echo paintings from the analytic period of Cubism. It almost seems that these squares, if scattered around the garment, could reproduce Georges Braque’s “Violin and Candlestick” (1910) or Pablo Picasso’s “Ma Jolie” (1911–1912). Picasso and Braque changed painting forever, thanks to the way in which they decomposed bodies and objects into simpler shapes like squares and rectangles. Miuccia Prada, much like the Cubists, has challenged traditional modes of representation of the human body and the female body specifically. Although she often shies away from 'political' statements that could be seen as controversial by some, it is hard to deny the implications of her work as she celebrates the modern, independent working woman who is not afraid to wear a bold tailleur or wooden platforms to work.