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Only a few weeks ago, Tiffany & Co. threw a big New York bash for the exquisite costume jewellery it featured in The Great Gatsby. It was only a matter of time before Prada followed suit, celebrating its own affiliation with the film and the fabulous Gatsby costumes Miuccia Prada designed in collaboration with the film’s costume designer, Catherine Martin.

Last night, Prada’s New York flagship (that’s the Prada New York Epicenter to you!) fêted this connection with the star-studded opening of an exhibition of the costumes. On display for only a couple of weeks, the exhibition  showcases mannequins dressed in character’s costumes, dresses, hats, shoes, and jewellery side by side with sketches, production stills, and never before seen backstage footage. If that’s not enough of a reason to visit, also displayed is a 200 foot mural depicting a montage drawn from the spectacular scenes hosted by Jay Gastby (aka. Leonardo Dicaprio) at his Long Island mansion to really help the visitors capture the roaring ’20s experience.

See runway photos from the Prada Fall 2013 show » On the day of a Prada show, little else seems to matter. The hours before Prada are spent anticipating what Miuccia will show. The hours after are spent ruminating on it. After shivering outside for half an hour we were finally allowed in to find […]

The post Milan Fashion Week: Leave it to Prada Fall 2013 to make the walk of shame look appealing appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

See Prada’s Great Gatsby Costume sketches »

With each new sneak peek, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby looks to be every bit as visually spectacular as we hoped. Today, that sneak peek comes via Prada, who just released sketches for her costume designs for the film, designed in collaboration with Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer Catherine Martin.

Four sketches of the over 40 Great Gatsby costumes have been released and are all adapted from the Prada and Miu Miu archives. Reminiscent of many recent collections, the pieces are heavily embellished with beading, sequins, stones, pearls and feature Prada’s signature bright colouring. Luxurious fabrics such as velvet and fur help create the look of the roaring twenties, with many flapper hems and shift shapes in focus.

Prada’s Great Gatsby costumes mark the third collaboration with Luhrmann and Martin—the three previously worked together on the 1996 film Romeo + Juliet and the 2012 Costume Institute exhibit Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations.

View the Miu Miu Spring 2013 ad campaign images »

By Lindsay Tapscott

Ruby red walls and delicate pink flowers; tie-dyed furs casually slung over shoulders; duchesse satin dresses and dark denim overcoats: Miu Miu’s modern “dishabille” femme fatale is here, in these just-released images from the label’s Spring 2013 ad campaign.

Photographed in New York by Inez & Vinoodh and starring many models of the moment, including Doutzen Kroes, Adriana Lima and Arizona Muse, the campaign follows Miu Miu’s tradition of subversive advertising imagery, offering us an updated, very Miuccia Prada-perverse, take on contemporary femininity, rich with nuance and authenticity. Celebrating the Miu Miu woman and all her facets—femme fatale, innocent ingénue, playful belle, nostalgic beauty—the campaign depicts a series of mise-en-scenes in an ambiguous domestic setting. Nonchalant groupings of the girls in various states of (un)dress, crumpled bedsheets, close-ups of a hand here, a high heel there, the campaign is quietly seductive in its portrayal of a new kind of insouciant feminine elegance.

See Prada’s Spring 2013 campaign »

It’s been a couple of months since we first feasted on Prada’s Spring 2013 collection, but any weariness of those toe sock/thong shoes has all been washed away with the just-released spring campaign.

Simply put, Prada’s Spring 2013 collection was a whole lotta Japan-meets-sixties look, and it seems that streamlined styling was the name of the game for the Steven Meisel-shot advertising images. The modeling A-list amongst its stars include Raquel Zimmerman, Saskia de Brauw, Eva Herzigova, Sasha Pivovarova, who all pose against stark grey backgrounds in furry coats, hot pants, daisy sunglasses and more. The flatform heels with the toe socks make a re-appearance but have been styled in a way that we know when Fall 2013 street style photos come pouring in, these shoes have the potential to shot day after day.

Editor-in-chief Bernadette Morra rounds out the Spring 2013 season with her review of Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen and Miu Miu.

See the Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen and Miu Miu photos »

Experience has told us that a Louis Vuitton collection usually follows a similar theme to the one Marc Jacobs explores for his own label. This season was no exception. Marc Jacobs zeroed in on graphics for Spring 2013, but where he mostly riffed on stripes back in New York, for Louis Vuitton it was all about the Damier check. Traditionally in a brown/beige checkerboard, Louis Vuitton’s Damier has seen recent popularity in a white/grey print for summer totes. So why not take that as a hint loyalists might be ready for more?

Showing, punctually, in a tent at the Musee du Louvre, Marc Jacobs had artist Daniel Buren create the set: a bank of four escalators that the models descended and ascended in pairs. They wore checks in yellow/white, beige/white, green/white and more. There were big checks, little checks and checks in between. They came on ‘60s car coats, boxy jackets over midi skirts and column gowns with patch pockets. The shiniest pieces were cover in what Jacobs promises are the tiniest sequins ever produced to give a metallic fluidity. Texture came from a flock-like pile similar to dense carpeting.

This is the first Vuitton collection not to feature the LV monogram. An interesting test. But then, unlike the regular folk who buy the odd Louis Vuitton bag, maybe the brand’s wealthier clothing customer doesn’t need a logo to show her status?

Check out Miu Miu’s Resort 2013 campaign

Who can get Hilary Rhoda, Caroline Trentini, Jessica Stam, Karen Elson, Sung Hee, Daphne Groeneveld, and Candice Swanepoel modeling in a room together? Miuccia Prada can.

In the Miu Miu Resort 2013 campaign and look book, the model A-team took to a brocade curtained room that resembles a grandmother’s house and, you know, they modeled.

View the Prada toe/thong/sock/platform photo evidence! »

It’s been a whole 24 hours since Miuccia Prada took her faith in the ugly-chic to its farthest extent, unleashing a Rei Kawakubo meets Mary Quant meets Marc Jacobs meets Marimekko hybrid collection accessorized with leather toe thong sock platforms at Milan Fashion Week Spring 2013. We’re still processing how we feel. Maybe we’re just finding a way to like the shoes because it feels bad to say anything bad about Prada. (It’s like; you’d never call your mom ugly, right?) Often with dear Miuccia, it takes a little while for eyes to adjust to her prophetic stylings (monkeys on stripes on poof sleeves? Hey!) but these little guys seem to be the first widely-disliked items Miuccia Prada has made in quite some time.

News that Miuccia Prada had a hand in designing Carey Mulligan’s stunning costumes in Baz Luhrmann’s forthcoming retelling of The Great Gatsby has sent our excitement for the movie’s release into overdrive.

Miuccia Prada isn’t exactly known for being all that press-friendly, and a rare interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica may shed some light on why the legendary designer hasn’t warmed to the media in the same way chatterboxes Karl Lagerfeld and Roberto Cavalli have.

In a translation by WWD, Prada’s feature in La Repubblica details all her concerns about the flagging Italian fashion industry. More than any other nation, Italy has the most family-owned luxury fashion houses: Prada, Gucci, Missoni and Fendi are just a few brands that still have an active voice from the founding designers’ families. But with more and more Italian fashion houses looking to sell (Valentino sold to Qatar’s royal family for over $850 million) or to expand by going public with IPOs, Prada is worried Italian fashion may become “second league.”

“[…] If our brands cross our borders, the credit, glamour, fame and decision making is in the hands of others, and we are abandoned, downgraded,” she cautioned.

Prada doesn’t fault the designers themselves; after all, she shows Miu Miu in Paris because of the city’s “attraction that is called glamour,” and Raf Simons’ move from Jil Sander (which shows in Milan) to Parisian fashion house Dior will mean “his value will further be emphasized.”

According to Prada, the real culprits are the Italian media and left-leaning intellectuals. Journalists’ treatment of their nation’s fashion industry as “frivolous” instead of a relevant industry contributes to the view that Italy is seen as a place with “less resources, culture, protagonists, ideas, vitality and money,” meaning that like Simons, “fashion goes elsewhere, looking for the best.”

After hearing all about the counterfeit lawsuit drama that has been going on lately, it’s almost a shock to the system to have someone say anything positive about the illegal industry. Most shocking of all is that the controversial comments are coming from Patrizio Bertelli, Prada’s CEO and Miuccia Prada’s husband.

Bertelli recently concluded a Bloomberg Television interview by saying the counterfeit industry really isn’t all that bad — in fact, it actually has some positive attributes.

“I always say counterfeits, we’re happier to have them than not have them. Don’t you think it’s sad for a brand that no one wants to copy them?” he said on air.

“Something else about counterfeits is that they provide a source of labor and income for lots of other people. So, maybe they’re not totally bad. So, in other words, we have a dual function. We want to penetrate the markets, we want to become successful and sell a lot in new markets. And we end up creating a lot of jobs and counterfeit factories, so that’s very good.”

Gucci, another famed Italian fashion house, evidently does not prescribe to Bertelli’s views that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, especially after their less-than-anticipated settlement with Guess over a counterfeit lawsuit battle (which we reported on earlier this week).

Bertelli did point out that Prada engages in lawsuits to protect their products, but that the fashion industry “doesn’t lend itself very well to patent protection” like high-tech industries do.

A spokesman for the fashion house seemed to try to do some damage control by telling WWD that Bertelli’s quotes were “part of an extended conversation that underscored how the market of counterfeits is an objective reality for successful brands.”

True enough — counterfeit products seem to be an inevitable reality of having “made it” in the fashion industry. But do Bertelli’s views oversimplify an industry that has its fair share of evils, not to mention the fact that it’s downright illegal?

In honour of Miuccia Prada‘s birthday (it’s today!) and her retrospective at the Met, we’re getting into our second Prada DIY of the season (check out our flower earring DIY). This time around, we’re fashioning our own fiery accessory inspired by the stylized fifties flames that were shown throughout her Spring 2012 collection.

Let’s DIY! »