Milan Fashion Week: Prada

Miuccia Prada's often impenetrable thought processes were more naked than usual this season. She wanted to perform a perverse/reverse alchemy: Take the clichés of worldly female glamour—sequins, snakeskin, fur, the color pink—and make them innocent again. After the show, she harked back to her lace collection of Fall 2008. "I'm curious about women," she said. "I want to challenge their passion." Python was also cut into cocoonlike twenties-style coats with big fur lapels. The reptile angle was pursued with a series of outfits coated with huge plastic scales. But were the girls serpents or mermaids? It was the kind of question that leaves a Prada audience uncertain about spontaneous responses. "Let me sleep on it," say the flummoxed journalists as they leave a show. Whatever, today's finale flourish was a gorgeous effect that perfectly encapsulated Miuccia's intended aim of innocent glamour. Let's plump for mermaids.