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Prada’s Almost Product Free Perfume Party

Few things are more painful than watching a major luxury label get things badly wrong, which was very much the dismaying case Sunday night in Milan when Prada decided to launch it’s latest men’s cologne and made it tricky for most guests to actually smell the very product.

Instead, the Italian brand staged a runway show unveiling its spring 2009 men’s collection and then projected a series of nine short experimental movies whose brief was “to challenge the idea of a perfume for a man; to produce visionary content” inspired by “sensory association of the Infusion d’Homme perfume.”

Largely pretentious visual ramblings by avant-garde cineastes, shown in semi darkness to around 500 people, these mini clips featured everything from verbal ramblings to images of a monkey awaking as it senses a new smell. Quite why an Italian label feels the need to name it’s newest cologne with a French title was never terribly clear, nor why the scent was nigh impossible to simply sniff. Few senior editors who attended when questioned the following morning reported actually smelling the cologne, or even seeing a bottle, though at one stage waiters did walk around in the gloom with trays bearing tiny bottles of the new scent.

Fragrance launches normally involve guests sensing the new cologne or perfume on scent sticks; and leaving with a flacon of the stuff. But nothing could be so simple for Prada, especially after a curious runway show, whose main conceptual thread involved men wearing clothes many of which seemed borrowed from their girlfriends - fashion it was hard to see many of them wearing outside their own homes. Do guys really want to walk out the door in sweaters that reveal their navel? Will men hang out in their squeeze's Lacoste style soft collar shirt dress, paired with black socks? In a word, unlikely.

A mono-color, print free collection the clothes big distinguishing feature was the fact that all the jackets, blousons and dressing gowns had an interior elastic strap that looped around each model’s neck; a curious accoutrement whose function was unclear other than to help the garment hang open on the catwalk. That last was the real star of this event; a brilliant stage set of miniature wooden platforms and mini hills, in between which rambled the show’s cast. Few of the styling tricks - like wrapping a rubber band around all the boots and shoes - seemed terribly innovative, and, remarkably for Prada the clothes looked not at all new.

It did not help Prada’s plans that a quirk of scheduling meant that the perfume launch began shortly before Italy’s national soccer team began playing a key quarter final in Euro 2008.

“From fascism to democracy,” Miuccia Prada commented to FWD, referring to her last women’s collection, an austere vision of authoritative ladies. Yet, it seemed an odd view of the participatory democracy when you don’t allow the voters much chance to look at the goods. In a word, an ill-conceived moment from Italian fashion’s greatest conceptualist, and also a bad omen. Spain eliminated Italy on penalties two hours later.

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