Ferretti's no enemy of gauzy gauzy femininity any time, but loving the over-the-top Bloomsbury feel of this!


Okay, this openwork gardening apron verges on bizarre, but there were lots of these meta-garments all over the runways.


Absurdly romantic, a touch Laura Ashley - but so pretty.


This juxtaposition of hard and soft feels very Vanessa Bell-at-Charleston.


Made for a garden party - ideally one involving apple trees.


The embroidered detailing is another vintagey nod.


Simple and perfect.


Isadora Duncan could have danced in this gauzy number


The motoring veil almost distracted me from this rather odd, rather mod little mini.

[Images via Getty.]

The runway had a giant pink heart backdrop, just because.


This hat! Is a daisy! Franco Moschino, who died 1994, always did silly, eccentric, colorful stuff, and the design house keeps his dream alive.


Velvet bows! This is ridiculously adorable, if a little short.


Daisy vision?


Wear this chic little shorts suit when running errands in St-Tropez.


The ruffles remind me of a Harlequin; the hearts on the belt are soooo deliciously 5th grade.


Even if I wouldn't wear this, I love looking at clothes made with a sense of whimsy and humor.


The gown is gorgeous, the oversized nameplate? Hilarious.


Delightful from head to toe, even if it is just an oversized T-shirt.


I don't know what the bag is about, but the ladylike shoes with ribbon laces are making little hearts appear where my pupils should be.


Pink eyelet bloomers, on someone over the age of 5, seem absurd. But that's the point, right?


The designers are quacking me up.


Just a little something to wear to a garden party.


I'll need these in an 8½ or a 9. Thanks.


Willy Wonka's girlfriend.


Mia Farrow wore floaty little numbers like this in Rosemary's Baby.


In a related show, Moschino Coke bottles walked the runway.


It's like Magritte… on coke!

[Images via Getty.]

You know who I can see in this? Jessica Simpson! If I were a designer, I know that's what I'd want to hear.


I think we were all thinking the same thing: what this needs is a fanny pack.


Leather eyelet short-shorts and a corset: I'd recommend this for meeting the in-laws.


Let's throw a little Ren-Faire in there while we're at it!


Oh yes, they did: bloomers.


This is perfectly cute!


Can you say "she's my cherry pie?" D&G can!


We call this one "roll in the hay."


The men, the jeans, the legend.

[Images via Getty]

So pretty - with just a touch of sinister.


Swimsuit? Romper? Who cares! This is what we call "runway-wear."


Crisp, vintagey, with just a hit of bullfighter flair.


The beachy photoprint is obviously going to be ripped off all over the high street.


Yeah, this is not going to translate well to Forever21.


Sharp and a little weird, frumpy magically made cool: that's what Prada does best.

[Images via Getty]

Love the bold, bright colors and sharp-as-a-knife lines on this simple strapless number.


Meek wallflowers need not apply. From the saturated jewel tones to the thigh-slit, it's all about commanding attention — and keeping it.


Loving the rich, vibrant hues!


Electric blue trousers? Yes. For taking care of business.


Somehow this is totally sexy without revealing anything, or being skin-tight.


And it's just so great to see so much color on the runway.


Ladylike without being fussy, frilly or froufrou.


Even though I've been worried about the Direction In Which Pants Are Going, these evening trousers are perfectly elegant.


Le sleek, so chic.


[Images via Getty.]

Even though there's some kind of waist-defining corset thingy happening here, this is one of the few garments that doesn't look pieced together from the remnants bin at a vintage store.

This is a little more representative of the Just Cavalli collection: Sheer and opaque layers, shredded jeans. The man's known for his animal prints, so the bangles are a must.

I think this is a dress over a tank over a bustier. Love the soft hues; hate the "I've Just Been Touched By Cavalli" slogan on the top.

Can gauzy sheers be rock and roll? They can try. But this is really just a few steps away from an '80s David Lee Roth mesh ensemble.

The cups seem '50s retro, but then the studs and shredding are more '80s. And just when and where is this appropriate? Turn that music down. Get off my lawn. Etc.

Some of the sheer dresses are quite pretty in and of themselves, but the see-through-ness makes figuring out how to wear this in the real world a perplexing conundrum.

Meh. And I heart JC just makes me think Jesus Christ. Or our friend from *NSync.

But, see, this is kind of gorgeous! It's like, fairy-princess disco, or something. Like a kid playing dress-up grandma's lingerie drawer. If grandma sometimes went to Studio 54.

Short, tight, ruched and meh. And Boo.

More layering, which I like, though the bra-over-the-shirt is a firm No.

This dress is both innocent and naughty. You wouldn't think the pink and black would work together, but they do. I think I like it? I'm so confuzzled.

Okay, this I know I like. Flapper-esque, shimmying textures and layers, a hint of shine, a teeny bit sexy. My favorite piece.

Is it a scarf? Is it a T-shirt? Will it fall in the toilet when you pee?

Yuck. But thanks anyway.

Black on black crime.

Roberto would like for us to call him Bobby now, I guess. Bobby: Your collection's a mess.

[Images via Getty.]

• Two weeks after adding Nicolas Cage's home to his sheaf of L.A. properties, Ed Hardy designer Christian Audigier has announced he's moving into Michael Jackson's last residence. Audigier will rent the $38 million home from his C.E.O., Hubert Guez. [E!]

• The glove the late King of Pop wore to marry Debbie Rowe has sold at auction for $49,000. [TMZ]
• "I love Japan. I love the people, the shopping, the fashion. I think they have so much fun with fashion...they don't take it too seriously," says Nicky Hilton. Don't take fashion seriously? Because insanely awesome and carefully cultivated street fashion just happens. [WWD]
  
• Mad Men's Christina Hendricks tells InStyle Weddings about her planned wedding to actor Geoffrey Arend, and specifies the designer (Carolina Herrera) and the look (Sophia Loren) of her wedding dress, but doesn't let it be photographed. [People]
• Lily Cole is a model, who is also (very) smart. The Daily Mail took a break from publishing finger-wagging paparazzi photos of her and scurrilous scuttlebutt about her to notice these facts. [Daily Mail]
• Nanette Lepore would like you to remember Labor Day by saving New York's Garment District from rapacious commercial exploitation. [NYTimes]
• Juicy Couture co-founder Gela Nash-Taylor doesn't drink out of common Starbucks cups. She has her own paper cups, because "I'm so into monogramming. I'm doing it on everything right now." [ToL]
• More than 800 stores across all five boroughs are involved in Thursday's shopping-with-fun event, Fashion's Night Out in New York City. Other regional and international events are also planned. [BrandWeek]
• Karl Lagerfeld will be tending the Chanel store with Carine Roitfeld in Paris, for example. [WWD]
• R.J. Cutler's documentary, The September Issue took in more than a quarter of a million dollars over Labor Day weekend. The $40,000 per-screen average makes it the fifth-highest-grossing documentary ever made. [AdAge]
• Meanwhile, Studio 360's Kurt Anderson says that based on the film, the fashion world is "amazingly old-fashioned, like some royal artifact from the 18th Century." [Studio360]
• The Los Angeles Times says the film "charts the intersection of art and commerce with a perhaps inadvertent eye for an excess that wasn't to last." (I am quoted in this article, proving that if you write long enough and, well, long enough on the Internet, someday someone will mistake you for an expert in something.) [LATimes]
• Anna Wintour, for her part, says that complaining about the sea change in the fashion industry that has taken place since the filming of that documentary is "like talking about that house you could've bought for nothing on the beach in Southhampton. Forget it. It's gone. The amazing golden years that everyone in the industry was enjoying were fantastic from a business point of view but also maybe a little unseemly. Every celebrity thought she could be a designer, and how many handbags? How many shoes? How much of a thing does everyone really need?" Then Wintour goes to the Macy's in Queens where she will be — on Mayor Bloomberg's orders that the event not smack of elitism — kicking off Fashion's Night Out, and upon surveying the scene, asks in a horrified voice, "Can we...enhance?" [NYMag]
• Sixteen months of declining same-store sales at the department store chain might make the budget for those "enhancements" leaner, however. [BW]
• And retailers in general, after an apocalyptic fall and winter, and a barely-improved spring and summer, are hungry for the fall sales boost that events like Fashion's Night Out are aiming to provide. [WWD]
• WWD has a beautiful, subscription-only, series of photographs of various New York designers as they prepare for fashion week. Alex Wang looks radiant and un-stressed, but the same can't be said of the male models snapped lining up for a casting at Yigal Azrouël. [WWD]
• Naomi Campbell would like to point out, for all those who called her hypocritical for modeling fur in Dennis Basso's fall campaign, that she actually quit PETA years ago. So her hypocrisy has weathered a few seasons now — like a vintage mink. [SB]
• More bad news for Annie Leibovitz: the practically-bankrupt photographer is being sued by an Italian photographer, Paolo Pizzetti, who claims that Leibovitz used his pictures without consent — or payment — for a Lavazza coffee campaign. Since Leibovitz could not travel to Italy to complete the shoot, which features images of models in romantic poses in front of Italian landmarks like the Trevi fountain and the Piazza San Marco, she had Pizzetti scout locations and take snapshots for her. Then Leibovitz shot the models in a New York studio, and digitally stitched the fore- and backgrounds together. Pizzetti says he was never paid for the rights to his contributions. [AW]
• Lady Gaga is reportedly set to perform during New York Fashion Week at an after-party for Givenchy hosted by Out magazine and to be held at The Box. [WWD]
• On the night of the 13th in New York, a short teaser film for Spring '10 by Gareth Pugh will be screened at Milk studios' M.A.C.-sponsored fashion shows in Chelsea. Although the first screening will be invitation-only, the second is open to members of the public who register on M.A.C.'s Facebook page. [Style.com]
• And newly-minted director Christian Louboutin just wrapped filming on an advertisement for Piper-Heidseick champagne starring model Elisa Sednaoui. [WWD]
• Manolo Blahnik says he never wanted to be a celebrity designer, and blames Sex And The City for his unwilling transformation. "If people talk to me about Sex And The City, I get sick," he told the Telegraph. "The taxi drivers recognize me now. It becomes too much and I don't feel comfortable." [PC]
• Sojin Lee's new online fashion venture, Fashionair, has launched. Lee last worked for Net-A-Porter, and her backer is Simon Fuller's company. [Forbes]
• Giorgio Armani designed a custom costume for a Spanish matador. It's grey and spangled. [Telegraph]
• Despite growing sales, profits for 2008 at Armani shrank by 41.4%, to $188.3 million. [WWD]
• Harold Tillman, a British fashion businessman who already owns Jaeger, has apparently acquired the bankrupt house Acquascutum. [ElleUK]
• Tom Binns for Disney might seem like a weird combination, because, well, it's a weird combination. [WWD]
• The Ebony Fashion Fair, an important industry event for black designers and models, is canceling its fall tour. The largest traveling fashion show in the world, Ebony helped launch the careers of talents like Kevan Hall and Tracey Reese, and raised money for various local and national charities including the NAACP and the Urban League. The economy is the culprit. [Examiner]
• Milan Fashion Week has been thrown into "chaos" by a series of re-schedulings to avoid schedule conflicts, which begat new conflicts and new re-schedulings, and then yet more conflicts and re-schedulings. [WWD]

[Milan, February 27. Image via Getty]

[Milan, February 26. Image via Getty]

• Tom Ford has spoken: eyebrow wiggling is now a sign of displeasure. "I haven't had any plastic surgery — despite what people think, this is my nose...I have had Restylane and Botox, but I don't think of that as plastic surgery any more. It's true I can't really frown, but I can move my eyebrows, so..." [Guardian]
• Well, at least Manolo Blahnik is less ridiculous! Oh, wait. "Manolo Blahnik tumbles into the room wearing an extremely dapper royal-purple suit, purple and yellow knitted tie, orange suede shoes and black circular glasses à la Le Corbusier. He stretches out his hand, and when I shake it he squeaks in pain, shaking, then retracting it." [Independent]
• Jean-Paul Gaultier, maybe? “'I did a revue with my teddy bear at home...I pretended he had breasts. The first cone bra I did was for my teddy bear, not for Madonna. I had a strawberry box for the stage, and I put a lot of feathers on my teddy bear for the headdress. I used feathers from my cleaning brush for the finale.'” [NYT]
• Come. on, Zac Posen, redeem your industry: "Puppies, babies and plastic surgery are the new fashion. That's where fashion's going." [Big Think]

• It's official: Project Runway saved from a fate worse than death, aka Lifetime Television for Women. [NY Mag]
• "Ironically, runways in the nation that brought us an all-black Vogue were not only less diverse than New York's but disappointingly white." [Shophound]
• The sale of YSL's art collection — which includes Picassos, a Matisse, a Leger and a Mondrian — is expected by auctioneers to bring in 440 billion dollars. [Breitbart]
• The Stylista contestants revealed! One of them is named Cologne. [NY Mag]
• This Lancome lip gloss and this Marc Jacobs shirt kind of look alike. [Glam Chic]
• The Queen's preferred dressmaker on the verge of collapse! Experts suggest it, um, failed to move with the times. [Telegraph]
• In a weird coincidence, the designer of Diana's wedding dress is going under, too. [Daily Mail]
• The Sergio Rossi-Puma sneaker heel is the stuff nightmares are made of. [Fashionista]
• Kate Moss apparently "snogs the face off" some Vivienne Westwood cohort. [Mirror]
• The Eastpak allegedly "reinvented" by Raf Simons. That's what they said about cafeteria food. [LA Times]
• Shoes are apparently a better investment than stocks. Although not, presumably, if you walk in them. Cue Carrie Bradshaw reference. [Business Sheet]
• "On Monday, men's magazine GQ India hits the newsstands, following in the footsteps of other male-only publications such as Men's Health, Maxim, and FHM, and experts are saying this is further proof that Indian men are embracing more global fashions." Pictured: an Indian guy in what appears to be a gold leather Harlequin outfit and bow-tie. [Reuters]
• Burberry Children's to bring overpriced (adorable) mini duffel coats to U.S. market. [WWD]
• Lenny Kravitz barred from Ric Owens show; sneaks in anyway. [Style.com]
• "Over the last year, Mr. Margiela, known as fashion’s “Invisible Man” because he never gives interviews and has rarely been photographed, has told colleagues that he wants to stop designing and that he has begun a search for his successor at the house." So...how will anyone know? [NY Times]
• Speculation rampant that Plum Sykes querying Guardian style column. Okay, not really. [Guardian]
• We can't really wrap our heads around the new Pat Field for venerable frump-purveyor Marks and Sparks line, so will probably stick to weeping. [The Sun]
• Fashion feels the credit crunch. [WWD]
• Gareth Pugh brings back the Elizabethan ruff. [ElleUK]

It is hard to break into the show circuit. Designers are so given to rotating their regular crop of supes among themselves that they will make audiences wait for the top girls to rush over from the previous show rather than settle for a newbie. The big catwalks are awash with the Catherine McNeils and Lily Donaldsons of this world, meaning that thousands of hopefuls — who have already run the gauntlet of getting agency representation, building their books up to competitive standard, and developing a runway body by any means necessary — are competing for just a couple of spots in the shows people notice. Most new (Austria) and newish (Madeline) models need to get lucky to even book one of the tiny, overlooked shows that crowd the penumbra of the main fashion week calendars.

And then there's Cato Van Ee. I really want to like Cato. She seems intelligent. She has cool parents — parents who wisely got their daughter to finish high school despite the interruption of covers for L'Officiel and Dutch Elle and, oh yeah, that Prada/Miu Miu show exclusive. Maybe I've just been having a blah time with the clients since leaving my beloved New York, or maybe it's just the general fatigue of so many time zones and jets and trams and buses and tiny models apartments. Maybe I am an incorrigible grump. But I recognize a sort of Patrician smugness in Cato's face when she collapses in gales of ohmaigawds when her booker tells her the news that, yes, she has booked Prada for a second season, and that makes me want to kick her in the shins.

Especially when she does her "Wooo! Prada + Cato, best team ever!" hand jive in the back seat of her private car.

Things aren't going so well for Madeline and Austria. Austria looks sullen and exhausted at her castings — something which I can confirm was not simply due to editing. In person, Austria looks so much like a little girl, albeit a tall one, it's anybody's guess why IMG is pushing the child whose age was given as 14 in February so hard right now — with a few more years education and maturity, she could be, well, a humbler but no less successful Cato. Madeline glows and her body is phenomenal, but Milan just isn't much of a market for unknown girls with short hair.

So Madeline and Austria cut out for Paris castings early, while Cato walks Prada, Just Cavalli, Dolce And Gabbana, Allessandro Dell'Acqua, and probably 23 other well-regarded shows in her unperspiring, non-acneic spare time.

Bitch.

Next week: the light at the end of the tunnel... Paris.

Earlier: Vogue's Model.Live: Crap Instructions From A Casting Agent
Vogue's Model.Live Sets New Online Series Record For Time Taken To Jump The Shark
Vogue's Model.Live: The New York Fashion week Hustle Begins
Vogue's Model.Live: Models Are Strange, When You're An Agent
Vogue's Model.Live: Castings Can Really Be A Grind
Vogue's Model.Live: Don't Get Famous, And Other Gems Of Parental Wisdom
Points For Effort: Vogue Reality Series About Modeling Surprisingly Realistic, A Little Boring

Related: Model.Live Episode 8

• Everyone's favorite human being, Tim Gunn, likes Dunkin' Donuts (Grace Mirabella turned him onto it.) And he can't afford to buy an apartment in New York, either! (Stars! They're just like us!) [Time Out New York]
• Simon Doonan, the woman's champion, bemoans that there's "a lot of conformity, a lot of blonde hair ... I often wonder if feminism was just a dream. I can't believe how women feel so scrutinised, and they're still so self-critical - I thought they would have let go of that now but they haven't. There's a very masochistic thing with women now that I didn't used to see. My girl friends in the punk era weren't like that at all." [Guardian]
• How's the fashion set responding to the economic crisis? "Everyone's freaking out. Everyone." [WSJ]
• AOL pulls the plug on Glass-House dwellers Joan and Melissa Rivers' Emmy coverage because of repeated humorous references to the Third Reich, corpulence. [P6]

• Prada denies it's trolling for an investor in Dubai; says it's still going public. The economy says otherwise! [WWD]
• Tom Ford's bringing in the whole Mad Men design team to work on his directorial debut. Which we would totally do, if you changed "directorial debut" to "our apartment." [E!]
• Not shockingly, Woody Harrelson is a big advocate for hemp. [Guardian]
• Of her unisex clown-in-the-asylum collection for H&M, Rei Kawakubo declares, “The collection is constructed around Comme des Garçons’ style. Rather than aiming to make clothes that no one has ever seen before, it is very much Comme des Garçons to its roots. My priority has always been creativity, which was not the least bit compromised with this collection. That was the last thing H&M wanted us to do. Otherwise they wouldn’t have asked us.” [BlackBook]
• Munichers at Oktoberfest are furious - furious! - at the poor quality of cheap, Chinese-made lederhosen. [Business Week]
• Hoping to avoid a similar fate, Scottish kiltmakers hold a summit to protect their industry. [UPI]
• Our greatest minds have come up with Kix by Katie, "a stick-on, lightweight, supportive strip which is applied to the inside back hemline of pants. This useful innovative invention adds just a bit of extra weight to your pants, making them hang down nicely." Thus is eliminated the heel-wedgie, the apparent bane of many a high-heeled dame. [InventorSpot]
• Nike's in trouble. [WSJ]
• PETA harasses Armani customers because he went back on his word about not using fur. No one makes a fool of PETA! They do that themselves! [Daily Express]
• Gillian Anderson, for one, is furious with him. [FirstPost]
• He responds by releasing a chocolate. "Available at Armani/Dolci stores this week through the end of October, the dark chocolate praline sweets are enclosed in a thin coating of white chocolate, conjuring “a tiny ethereal ghost,” the company said." [WWD]
• We apparently don't feel nearly self-conscious enough about our rapidly-aging hands. [NYT]
• Did Anthropolgie rip off their whimsical wall design? [Slog]
• British film on Hijab fashion rubs some the wrong way. [Muslim Media Watch]
• Aw, no one wants Elton John's really expensive brooch! A casualty of the economy? [The Star]
• Some Milan designers apparently in deep economic denial, all about "optimism!" [VogueUK]

• What the world needs today: a celebrity fashion "collaboration"! The latest is Rachel Bilson, with Brian Reyes, and the apparel in question is bridesmaids dresses, for her BFF's wedding to The O.C. and Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz. We hope she choses a style that is flattering on people who are not anti-food. [Fashionista]
  
• In a sad day in the history of the legendary House of Givenchy, Justin Timberlake has been tapped to front a yet-to-launch new fragrance of theirs. And in heaven, Hubert de Givenchy cries into the bosom of Audrey Hepburn. [WWD, sub req'd]
  
• Fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier, possibly off the deep end: "Love is everywhere. I look at you and I see love. Hearts are everywhere and love is everywhere. This is very good." Um, OK. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn: Banned again! This time from D&G. The As I Lay Dying of the garmentverse, that one. [Fashion Week Daily]

• On the whole, the buyers in attendance at the Milan shows thought they, how to put this, sucked. [WWD, sub req'd]
• A dress worn by Kate Moss! Now on eBay! [Sassybella]
• Do you like McDreamy as the face of Versace Men? [Uh, is that a rhetorical question? -Moe] [Sassybella]
• French label Paul & Joe: Now designing Perrier cans. We last heard of them when they did a Target collection. [Sassybella]
• Karl Lagerfeld, never one to miss out on a moment of potential glory, is staging a shhhhhsecret Fendi fashion show during Paris fashion week. Even though, like, Fendi's an Italian label and just showed. [Vogue UK]
• English designer/Agyness Deyn BFF Henry Holland: Collaborating with Levi's on an eight-piece capsule collection. For those of you who care enough to know who Agyness Deyn's BFF is, we can only assume. [Catwalk Queen]
• Hugo Boss is launching a new fragrance, Boss Pure. Because nothing's really quite as pure as a whiff of oversold department store cologne. [WWD, sub req'd]

Ms. Prada's black lace dresses are something else. Lace is the fabric of women's lives, from christening robes to bridal gowns to widow's weeds. (And let us harmonize: We are fashion nuns!)...Ms. Prada took a single idea and stayed with it, working the black and beige lace (or orange and blue lace) into coats and slim dresses and tops with stiff satin peplums, all over bodysuits or white cotton shirts... Structurally, proportionally, the clothes were very direct and simple — the ruffled edges of some of the 1940s dresses repeated in the suede and patent-leather pumps and nylon bags. The lace becomes the intellectual and emotional catalyst. You can't not ask if the dresses are indecent — many of them are, after all, transparent. But Ms. Prada has made sure that it's not the only question her collection raises against the female self.

Then came the first shot of arsenic and old lace: the lace worked in flowers, crunchy or transparent, with the kicker in the sexual charge coming literally from underneath in the case of transparent panels showing and revealing clinging underpants and alabaster white thighs...It was a remarkable show, powerful in its presentation as the models descended the ramp, but above all original, inspiring and intensely Prada in its mix of the prim and the perverse...As if in a Fellini movie, there was a clerical hint to the buttoned-up collars and a sense that Prada was unleashing on the fashion universe both a lace revival and erotic dreams.

Miuccia Prada offered a new form of austere sexuality, with lace as the new tool of seduction... butt there was a perverse side to her vision, too. The silhouette almost obliterated the breasts; indeed the entire upper body was shielded, from waist to a tiny, high-set governess like collar which finished just under the chin. Instead the clothes created erogenous zones on the hips - emphasized with a boned, "peplum" skirt, fastened with a buckle - and bare legs, which were glimpsed through the intricate floral patterns of heavy, Guipure lace.

...Prada sent out a brilliant lace-based collection that was feminine, strong and intriguingly austere, and that owed debts to haute couture as well as early Nineties Prada (call up those Geek Chic button-up shirts)... Prada leapt a world away to a place all about arch control done up in lace, a material she had long disliked until she happened upon a certain swatch and found herself obsessed. Of course, hers is not of the prissy ilk... In fact, everything about it amazed, starting with the long, lean silhouette punctuated by leather snoods for the hair and those shoes that featured offbeat ruffled extensions...Yet for all of the surface interest, a sense of confident calm prevailed, with an undercurrent of minimalism in spirit if not in fact. Lest one miss that point, the designer de-laced momentarily with a skirt and dress stark in their unfettered beigeness.

it was no surprise that last night's keenly awaited catwalk collection was — within the parameters of the quirky Prada aesthetic — a very commercial one. Semi-sheer guipure lace dresses and skirt suits in black or coffee were both elegant and rather avant-garde, which is precisely the kind of combination for which women are prepared to pay the prices Prada charge.

Miuccia Prada doesn't do uniforms (unless they're vaguely fascistic, and ironic) and she certainly doesn't do sexy, at least not in the conventional sense. It's odd though, because at her show last night — one of the most anticipated and the most thought-provoking — the models wore lots of sheer lace, in black, gold, blue, camel and brown, with little else, apart from buttoned-up mens' shirts and bib fronts; the shirt-tails providing a fig-leaf of modesty over their bottoms... But this was by far the best show of the season. It sounds nerdish to get worked up about a fabric, but Prada managed to spin a whole new aesthetic from her lace, which is more usually associated with brides, babies and hookers, mixing heavy woollen guipure lace with lighter, finer lace, and even silk dresses screen-printed to look like lace.

Tuesday night's collection was a knockout with models descending a curved runway like superwomen from the sky. Longer length, black pencil skirts sprouted ruffles like wings, with the odd men's shirt collar peeking out from the neckline of a dress, hinting at a woman's masculine side. Come fall, everyone will be wearing lace because this was a collection resplendent in the stuff. In black, brown, navy or gold, lace became three-dimensional, with lace flower appliqués fused on top of full skirts that reached below the knee. True to Prada's kinky side, some pieces were see-through, because a woman's sexuality is part of her power.

[A]s usual, there can be no mistaking this designer's work for anyone else's, season by season... I found the whole thing stimulating because it made me think that these ruffle and lace textiles, like people in general, have been stereotyped in certain roles, but can break free. Artists should make us think, and Ms. Prada is definitely an artist. But how to wear those unlined lace suits? On the runway, Ms. Prada had the models wear body suits, shorts and other clothes underneath. Very theatrical, but that would look weird on Main Street. So I asked her later if she would line them in the store. "Of course," Ms. Prada quickly replied, grinning. Then she played with the thought, and pondered whether she might leave a few unlined for more daring clients. She has a genuine demeanor, but I swear her smile was a little wicked.

Earlier: Miuccia Prada Puts End To Fashion Week Apartheid

Just Cavalli:

Missoni:

Burberry:

Jil Sander:

Gianfranco Ferre:

Giorgio Armani:

[All images via AP.]