Skirting the Issue

Wednesday: Prada snakeskin peeptoes

Sure, by now you’ve seen the photos of the skirts whimsically spinning like a ceiling fan, and the flared skirts spread out like pansies and flattened under plastic. But let’s discuss the placards at the “Waist Down: Skirts by Miuccia Prada” installation at the Prada Epicenter store in SoHo. Curator Kayoko Ota of Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture “carefully studied” the skirts, says the gazette that’s handed out at the exhibit, “so that each piece is shown in a lucid yet surprising manner.”

Indeed! Now I thoroughly enjoyed the installation — it was like a walk down memory lane, an ode to all the skirts I’ve loved before — but it’s the descriptions that are truly priceless. They read like a fashion writer gone amuck (not that I haven’t been guilty of that before) or maybe an art historian writing earnestly about a fashion show, and I have to say they warmed my heart. (Whether or not you make it to SoHo before May 31, it’s worth picking up the catalog that accompanies it.)

“This design is purposefully made heavy, yet it gives off a very strange sensation and a different attitude when one walks in it,” reads the description of a steel metal mesh skirt from fall/winter 2002.

On a beaded mini from spring/summer 2003: “Even though many corsages are attached, the fabric is held in suspension without a wrinkle, leading many to believe that some secret technique is at work here.”

On a flared skirt decorated with pink organza corsages: “Here the clothing concept is pushed to the very limits of excess yet still remains perfectly wearable — a signature of Prada irony.”

Well, amen to that!

Technorati Tags: Prada, Waist Down installation, skirts

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 7:01 am and is filed under Fashion, Pop Culture, Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.