A Modish Proposal

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A Modish Proposal

In Milan, collections show designs for women with very diverse lives.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

Designer Miuccia Prada is by far Milan's most visionary designer. Whether she draws inspiration from the past, the present or the electrical storm inside her own head, her sensibility is always forward-leaning. The collection she showed Tuesday was tantalizing because it evoked the languid elegance of a 1950s beach town while simultaneously suggesting contemporary dishevelment and sexuality.

The models were styled with their hair smoothed back and tucked into a neat chignon. Their chests were slightly oiled to suggest heat, perspiration and eroticism. The fabrics were crinkled and crisp and often looked as though they had been hand-dyed into a sort of, but not quite, batik print. Finely woven cardigan sweaters opened in the back and were casually cinched with ribbon. Metallic gold dresses glittered under the lights. Skirts rolled down along the waist and dresses hung off one half of the body with modesty maintained by a simple white T-shirt.

A plain white Prada T-shirt, people. Pause for a moment and guess how much that might cost in this age of the almighty euro and the demoralized U.S. dollar. Doesn't the mental exercise make your head hurt? Stop thinking about it. Just buy a Hanes.

The collection speaks to a contemporary woman's desire for comfort, ease, sex appeal and chic. Yet it is impossible to call the collection a success, a pure example of modern style. The women wearing the clothes -- and specifically the shoes -- were so tense, fearful and unsure of themselves that their body language became a painful distraction. The models were wearing sky-high slingbacks with a raffia-covered platform. To make matters worse, their feet were encased in little fabric slippers -- like something a shopper would borrow in a store to try on a pair of shoes. Their feet were sliding atop the ill-fitting, impossibly high shoes. The models wobbled. They stumbled. A couple of them collapsed onto the concrete floor in a mortified heap, their legs splayed out beneath them.

Bad shoes happen to good designers all the time (although rarely at design houses famous for their leather goods). Heels have been known to snap on the runway and models have often simply stepped out of ill-fitting shoes. But this seemed to be a matter of placing aesthetic vision over respect for the woman. The models were done wrong.

Diversity is also essential to being a modern designer. Anyone fully and genuinely engaged in the world understands the growing diversity of high-end customers. Designers are constantly on the move, hunting for inspiration, parachuting into foreign cities for store openings and fawning over consumers in Asia and the Middle East. So it is not just politically correct frothiness that should compel a designer to cast a diversity of models in shows, it's also a savvy business move. To do otherwise makes designers look out of touch.

There has been a public debate about diversity in fashion in New York, led by agent Bethann Hardison, a former model. And the thread was picked up in Italy by Italian Vogue, which dedicated its July issue to black models. The issue sold out and received second printings in the United States and some parts of Europe.

There have been noticeably more black models on the Milan runways this season, notably at Prada, Alberta Ferretti, D&G and several other shows. Equally striking was the lack of any obviously black models on the runway at Giorgio Armani and Jil Sander.

The significance of their absence from the Armani runway lies in the designer's prominence in this city. He may not set the direction of fashion in Milan, but he remains the designer who resonates most strongly with the average shopper whose fashion knowledge is based on movies and red-carpet photographs.

So it was disappointing to see Armani use an array of scrawny, look-alike white female models with their pale hair gloppily gelled into a stiff ponytail, as well as several men who all looked as though they'd just had their hair frosted, hadn't shaved in a week and needed a bath.

Armani has dressed Tina Turner and Beyoncé and supported concerts for an array of black performers. But the range of his customers was not reflected on his runway. He has done better in the past, and one hopes he will do better in the future.

The Jil Sander show was significant because the label has been one of the foremost champions of a homogenous runway -- one filled with models cast and styled to be virtually interchangeable. It is an aesthetic vision that began with the house's namesake and continues with its current designer, Raf Simons. The show this season looked like a Teutonic death march.

Simons has an inspiring, minimalist vision. And it's one that speaks to any woman who sees herself as on the move and unencumbered in her ambitions. His sensibility also champions individualism and independence. Simons makes clothes for women who don't want to fit into the status quo. They want to redefine it.

One hopes that next season he will allow that spirit to inform his runway presentation so that not only are the frocks modern, but so is his style.