Fashion Wire Daily January 24, 2005 - MILAN - No one could call last week’s Italian men’s fashion season an easy one for the Prada Group. Helmut Lang resigned from his position as Creative Director of the house bearing his name; and the Jil Sander show, the season opener, proved that a collection with a name like Jil Sander on the label needs the personality of a designer to render a basic and beautiful grey dress coat into a minimal designer piece.

So, all eyes were on Miuccia Prada and her two collections to determine if Italy’s biggest luxury group would continue to be an inspiration in men’s fashion. The lady delivered the goods. After an inspirational and classic take for Prada, we saw one of the best Miu Miu collections in years.

For fall-winter 2005/2006, the Miu Miu collection accomplishes what other designers merely aspired to do - bring a gentlemanly country feeling into an urban environment. Wonderful camel coats, boxy velvets tuxedos, worsted wool suits and brilliant faux patchwork paisley shirts would look equally at home in the English and Italian countryside or inside London, Milan and New York. Miuccia used a similar vocabulary in her Prada show, classic staples in a men’s wardrobe, yet managed to take it much further in Miu Miu.

“Urban, yet country,” the designer told FWD.

The single best idea was using Shetland tweeds in gentlemanly suits and snug pants in old-fashioned materials. One in oatmeal bore an uncanny resemblance to a suit my own mother had made back in the sixties, so traditional was the fabric.

Above all, everyone loved the look on model of the week Danny Beauchamp (for the uninitiated, check out the new Pringle ad campaign) of a black shearling coat over a velvet tunic and straight leg pants. Inspired both by Russian imagery and Celtic sensibility, Miuccia also crafted a silhouette from folklore tunic shirts that billowed out under narrow jackets for a genuinely new look.

Plus the show felt like a great performance art event. It was backed by an excellent soundtrack – re-interpreted David Bowie and the Beach Boys songs - and the captivatingly giant multi media happening called “Wunderkammer”, an ongoing Prada – Rem Kolhaas collaboration, consisting of a live projection of Internet imagery.

The show did have one obvious flat: it was too over-styled. A dozen skinny belts were worn over cardigans coats and jackets – women do that sort of thing, not men - and even scarves pushed into turtlenecks for effect. It also marked the first season that Miuccia dispensed with the services of mens’ styling heavy David Bradshaw – which meant no more computer silly computer baubles jangling from men’s belts. Ironically, this decision to drop kitsch techno key chains came in a show staged just 48 hours before the Financial Times weekend section devoted a whole page to a story entitled “Robots hit town, wearing Prada.”