Prada’s Bags are Artistic, Feminist for Spring 2014

Sometimes feminism and the fashion industry find themselves at odds, but Miuccia Prada has been dutifully doing her part for years to demonstrate that the two can peacefully coexist, and, what’s more, fashion can actually act in service of female equality and women’s rights. For Prada Spring 2014, she chose to do that in a somewhat literal way – she commissioned pieces from six artists, all of which depict women’s faces, and recreated them in her show space and on many of the items of clothing themselves, including the bags.
The painted bags are totally striking and easily my favorite pieces from the collection, but if you prefer something slightly less literal, the spring is full of structured, heavily compartmentalized satchels that harken back to the 1960s. Perhaps that’s a pointed choice; after all, the 60s were the era that women’s liberation really caught fire, at least in the US, and it feels pretty subversive to see models wearing modern street art and athletic-inspired footwear carry bags in shapes that my grandmother would recognize. I only wish that Prada’s show space had allowed photographers a more straight-on view of the bags themselves. Check out what we can see of the collection below.