In 2014, Miuccia Prada turned her attention to one of fashion’s greatest supporting acts: the bra.
Underwear as outerwear was hardly a new concept at the time. Jean Paul Gaultier championed undergarments as ready-to-wear with his iconic cone-shaped designs in the 1980s. Vivienne Westwood brought corsets to the forefront of punk high fashion in the 1990s. And the concept still has steam: Just this spring, Sarah Burton’s debut at Givenchy included brassiere-baring dresses in silk fishnet. However, Prada’s Spring 2014 collection accomplished something different by making underwear an inseparable part of the outerwear. Case in point: this (safe for work) tailored coat with bra-shaped beading.
Riffing on a military coat, the garment, offered on 1stDibs by Resurrection Vintage, is made of sharply tailored army-green wool and features two oversize front pockets, cuff straps and three large wool-covered buttons. Prada’s twist on the classic coat is hard to miss. Adorning the chest is a dazzling tapestry of beads, crystals and plastic paillettes in the shape of bra cups. Continuing the illusion, wide straps of intricately textured embroidery curve over the shoulders and mid back. The understated color palette almost camouflages the audacity of the design, which is one of the collection’s subtlest and most wearable.
The runway show the coat hails from was distinctly bosom-forward. Everything from coats to cocktail dresses were embellished with beaded, color-blocked and sculpted cups and harnesses. Accompanying many of these chest pieces were portraits of women, some stylized in the manner of graphic Pop art screen-prints, others rendered with an almost Katzian nouveau realism. From some designers, these motifs might be seen as perfunctory feminist tributes, but not from Miuccia Prada.
Given her prolific fashion career, many might not realize that Miuccia Prada holds a PhD in political science from the University of Milan. She was also once a member of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Women’s Union, and she is a fierce advocate for women’s standing in the fashion world and beyond. In 1978, she took over the family business from her mother, Maria Bianchi, and she holds considerable seniority among the few female designers currently at the helm of European luxury brands. Prada has the brains, position and gumption to make pointed statements in her work.
Fusing a bra with an overcoat is a cheeky nod to a typically unseen and unsung essential of women’s dressing, but on closer inspection, it’s much more. Rather than seeking to legitimize lingerie as a standalone garment or creating tantalizing suggestions through sheer layering, the subversive design unites the forms of under and outer garments on the same plane, giving them equal visibility. Prada glorifies and bejewels the bra like a crown, a source of power for the wearer.
