Milan Fashion Week: Prada and Ferragamo

Yesterday the two houses planning IPOs this year both had their fashion shows. Prada's was fantastic. Ferragamo? Well, I wanted to like it. I really did. I like the C.E.O. Michele Norsa very much but ...

Well, let's start with Prada. It was an ode to lace this season because, Miuccia Prada said after the show, she always hated the material. So she wanted to play around with it and see what could be done with it in modern shapes. "It is about surface. Everyone is talking about minimalism, working with lace or a print allows you do do things that are simple." The result was a collection that was as wearable as it was beautiful. It is much more commercially viable than last season's difficult prints, but when I asked if the IPO was on her mind, she just giggled and changed the subject. She did say that she had "all of Switzerland" working on the lace for the show. So you wonder how they're going to get enough lace made to fill all their stores. Prada would only say, "the production takes a lot of time."

The collection by Ferragamo creative director Christina Ortiz lacked the same sophistication. Ready-to-wear accounts for only 15 percent of sales, so that isn't enough to scuttle the IPO, but more problematic were the shoes. They relied too heavily on designs by Mr. Ferragamo himself and with re-issues of those designs now gracing the shelves of hip stores like 10 Corso Cuomo in celebration of the company's 80th anniversary, the differences between the company's fabulous past and it's somewhat confused present are all too apparent.