I have to say I'm a little stumped. Not that I shouldn't have expected a 180 degree U-turn from Miuccia Prada, because that's the only thing you can rely on from her. But just the precise direction she took.

Primitive and archaic is the direction she says she wanted to go in, and I think in that she succeeded, especially with her use of rumpled textiles. And to give her fair credit, there were a couple of looks which I thought hit the mark, and which any woman with a couple thousand euros to sling around will want to have in her closet. (Witness those I post here.)

While hers is one of the shows I often look to to get a sense of the direction of fashion, this time it did all make me wonder whether Prada is one of those businesses that can really just rest on the massive sales of its shoes and handbags to fuel the rest of the business.

I imagine that could be a very liberating position to be in creatively. But on the flip side, wouldn't you want women to wear the clothes as well?