Miu Miu SS16 show report Paris Fashion Week

There was leather strapping at Miu Miu. For SS16 Miuccia Prada had buckled black straps around nude ballet shoes that were laced around the ankle and hung with plastic fobs (I was especially taken by a unicorn charm).

Feet were much the feature here. Where the clothes appeared to have borrowed more from the wardrobes of the Italian neorealists (house coats, gingham shirts, pencil skirts and graphic viscose knits), the shoes were made for disco: stack-soled, lightening-glittered and laced Bay City Roller-style in a patchwork of vivid colours. At Miu Miu, Prada’s successful younger sister, which posted year-on-year growth of 4 per cent in March, Mrs Prada had refined a rare talent for grabby accessories, and there was no shortage here: raccoon-tail talismans swung from coats and belt hoops, the models wore jagged acrylic hairbands over their bunches, and the bags were bright and tactile, with contrast piping and statement handles.

Elsewhere the mood seemed rather more sober: check tweed trousers were high-waisted and cropped like Capri pants, skirts fell to mid-calf. Pretty dresses with blouson shoulders in graphic prints looked 1940s in style — a look well known at Miu Miu, where Mrs Prada likes to play with the codes of postwar politesse by adding perverse details. Many looks were worn with white sports socks, banded at the rim, and polo shirts or boxy grandad sweaters and cardigans in clashing graphic knits. Later looks were totally sheer, as though topped with a 10-denier veil.

Mrs Prada had not been immune to the lure of lingerie, the biggest, most consistent theme of the season, and she offered transparent gauzy dresses lined with ruffles, sequinned with pretty fan motifs or block-printed with candle and flame prints. Neither ’90s nor negligees, they seemed almost anti-sexy, and brilliantly so — Mrs P is great for picking up a trend and then subverting it.

The coats were the silent stars of the show, oversized with long lapels and broad shoulders they swept over outfits with a retro panache. And at the very end of a surprisingly sunny and frequently stunning season, how fitting to think about covering up again.

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Photographs: Catwalking