The Milanese, meanwhile, treat sex almost as an intellectual pursuit—just think of Prada’s esoteric and erotic mystique. While Mrs. Prada and her coconspirator Raf Simons settled on one of the most provocative garments in a woman’s wardrobe—the skirt, with its tantalizing promise to reveal a little (or a lot) of leg—they found a dizzying array of ways to present it: with tough-girl leather jackets; with reserved librarian sweaters; with tomboy plaid shirts left unbuttoned; and, of course, with skimpy bras. In other words, the collection was a meditation not just on the skirt as a garment, but on the innumerable ways a woman can exist in the world. In that, it presented a rich panoply of sexiness—nerdy, brazen, demure, sophisticated—and reflected the many moods and contours of female desire.
Or there was Simone Bellotti’s Jil Sander, where a study of minimalist imperfection—creased dresses, askew coats, and jackets—gently hinted at a postcoital rush, as if hurriedly leaving some clandestine liaison, haphazardly buttoning your jacket, no time to smooth away some sordid wrinkles. In that way, it brought to mind an unsavory tension that, to me, recalled the films of Antonioni or Fellini.
Photo: Courtesy of Tom Ford
