Prada's Milan show captures the dazzling and the intricate

If the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to function while holding two opposing ideas in the mind, it makes sense that fashion’s brainiest designer, Miuccia Prada, is so fascinated by the “dualities” concerning the lives of women.

At her show on Thursday night in Milan, Prada spoke of women’s “constant dialogue and struggle” between “what you have to be to be strong and active and protect yourself, and what women inherited – the sweetness, the bows, the femininity”. The question of how to manage this duality, she said, “is the whole problem of my job. And it is something that is not clear yet”.

Prada’s attempts to square that particular circle were especially strong on the catwalk this season. The show began with muted colours – brown nylon, earth-toned checks – and very sensible shoes, some of which looked like a hybrid between wellies and Chelsea boots, others like galoshes.

It crescendoed into a series of dazzling fluoro outfits, including an intricate, fringed evening dress the screaming yellow shade of a hi-vis safety jacket and an outfit that looked like a pack of highlighter pens: neon orange top, neon pink trousers and neon green shoes. The final looks were fluoro, too: a reflective green tunic with a matching bucket hat, followed by another matching hat and tunic combination in neon pink.

Prada said the colours were about freedom: “I imagined that a woman could go out looking super sexy in the street at night without being bothered. It’s about the freedom of women to go out in the night.”

Source: theguardian