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Women's Wear News
2005
Tuesday night marked not only the re-opening of the recently fire-damaged Prada
flagship in New York, or “epicenter" as the company refers to it, but
also the unveiling of its traveling exhibit, “Waist Down - Skirts by Miuccia
Prada."
The exhibit, curated by Kayoko Ota of Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan
Architecture (OMA) - the firm that originally designed the $40 million, 23,000
square foot space - presents Miuccia Prada's most iconic skirts since her
inception in 1988.
Unlike some fashion exhibits, the show takes pains to present the skirts as
works of art, showcasing them gallery-style on white foam pedestals or forging
them into new oeuvres, camouflaging them on a wall-hanging of the same printed
fabric they were cut from, vacuum packing them like bacon and hanging them on
the wall or placing them on the lower half of a mannequin form so the skirts end
up looking like lamp shades.
There are also "performing" skirts that come alive for spectators,
thanks to hidden motors. Either they spin in the shop's corners, or dance on the
walls like invisible vaudevillians kicking their legs around underneath the
pleats - this odd staging was made possible by a covert swinging pendulum.
Whatever the mode of display, the skirts shine in all their embroidered, heavily
beaded, mirrored and feathered glory.
Had one not known the skirts were items of the past, they might just assume
Prada's merchandising team got a little crazy and presented the new collection
in an awfully creative way.