Prada’s Spring Summer 1996 was a turning point in the history of the brand. Challenging conventional ideals of beauty and sexuality, the collection first introduced us to off-key cool and was a chic disrespect for the rules of fashion. Titled the Banal Eccentricity collection, more widely known as the ‘Ugly Chic’ collection, it was a display of searching for the “unexplored” by contrasting concepts, colours, and textiles in ways that each time “elicit an almost questionable disgust to the normal eye”. Through this collection, Prada looked to “attack the idea of beauty and sexiness”. This was Miuccia Prada’s “obsession” at the time.
Whilst not every collection that followed from mainline Prada opted for such a playful and subversive approach to fashion, their sister-line Miu Miu certainly did. Launched in 1993, a few years before Banal Eccentricity, Miu Miu was titled after Miuccia’s family nickname and existed so she could be “more radical, more avant-garde, more disruptive”. Every collection and even every advertisement that was presented became a means for experimentation. Evident in bubble soles on heels, psychedelic geometrics hand-painted onto skirts, even the cropped haircuts of the models. Everything exuded playfulness.
“Prada is what at the end I am, and Miu Miu is what I would like to be”- Miuccia Prada
