ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2013

"I wanted them to be very elegant, but in a way that contains all the opposites of elegance,” said Miuccia Prada of the looks in her tightly focused Miu Miu collection. Prada created a capsule wardrobe of classic fifties shapes like a full-cut, swinging clutch coat; a pencil skirt; and a sweater-girl brassiere top, accessorized with upsweep Mad Men secretarial eyeglasses and contrast-colored opera gloves, and warped them into something unexpected. Those tops, for instance, were deliberately cut to be ill fitting, and, as Prada added, “the rich fabrics destroyed with crushing, with tie-dye and the poor upgraded,” so that denim and plasticized vinyl, for instance, were transformed into tailored pieces with a whiff of mid-century haute couture to them, whilst duchess satin was pummeled to destroy its body, and bedazzling chunks of rhinestone were strung haphazardly on leather lariat necklaces or used to decorate the straps of a flat, biblical sandal, such as you might find on a Greek island holiday.

The bold prints, like exploding stars or glowing orbs, had the look of fifties abstract art (they were also replicated in sophisticated intarsia treatments of fox or mink), but then the whole show had the vibe of a Funny Face-era Left Bank existentialist jazz bar, with the low, smoky lighting, and the sound track that mixed the musical riff from Malcolm McLaren’s “Jazz In Paris” with Neneh Cherry’s seductive cover of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” The look was very Juliette Greco, too, from the hairdos, high-cut bangs and long hair, to the classic high-heeled winklepicker shoes. “Very Parisian,” said Prada, “but in a fake way, in a wrong way! But in the end I wanted them to be elegant,” she added, and, in that quirky discordance of which Prada is a master, think a rose pink mink paletot with a lipstick-red vinyl sheath dress, or a classic Queen Elizabeth II handbag constructed to crush as flat as an envelope they were.