Last week, Cathy Horyn blogged that “Between Miuccia Prada in Milan and Marc Jacobs at Vuitton we saw the return of the lush, full-hipped woman, her breasts served up like ripe fruit.” The Cut exclaimed that “The Prada Show Was All About Boobs.” Between the two shows and the blog posts and comments about them, there’s a lot to write about here. However, I need to finish my business plan homework for tonight’s class, so I will only focus on Prada today.

According to The Huffington Post, “toothpick models were fired by the Italian Prada design house and replaced by Victoria’s Secret Angels in a surprising last minute move, the night before the show on Feb. 24.” This piece of information filled me with skepticism for three reasons:

1. How likely is it that the clothes were actually made for women with average breasts (much less full breasts) if they were cut using typical high fashion fit models all along?

2. Prada is the same designer who, when faced with designing costumes for the non-singing cast of a Metropolitan Opera production, exclaimed, “I cannot clothe them! I need models!” The cast members were fired and replaced with models.

3. Victoria’s Secret only sells up to a DDD.

With this in mind, I took a look at the show. The images below come from style.com.

You can tell this dress is made of amazing fabric, and I love the ruffle at the bottom, but I’m only a fan of the pointed, inverted darts to the extent they qualify as a “fun with boobs” design. (For past examples on my blog, see here and here.) And of course I hate the crew neck, which she unfortunately repeated throughout the collection. I wonder–if she had used fit models with average or full breasts for the entire design process, would she have changed the necklines? On the other hand, there certainly isn’t a cleavage issue.

The two following dresses are “Fun with Boobs with Ruffles” designs. They give flat women something up top, but I think even a buxom woman could wear the first one. I’m not a fan of the midriff showing in the second dress. It’s challenging enough to keep the top of a bra from showing. With this dress, you’d have to worry about the band as well.

I call this dress “the Boob Tray”.

I’m not sure about the empire waist on this coat (flattering? unflattering?), but I like the line. Many of her other coats hung like tents.

I’ve always heard that double-breasted jackets are a no-no for the full-breasted woman, but I have a double-breasted trench coat that works fine. So is the coat below a yes or no for us? My guess is that it would make some of us look just too busty.


Finally a neckline that I like, but I don’t like the dress. The band across the waist cuts her in two and makes her look short-waisted.

If you watch the show, tell me: does this woman have real breasts or air breasts like the woman’s in the top picture? I couldn’t figure it out.

There you have a collection that was “all about boobs”. Maybe others will begin to design with breasts in mind as well, although I doubt that Prada designed with full breasts in mind. I think she would find full breasts inconvenient. Since we have to live with them, we must find and wear what works for us regardless of what the latest runway shows are highlighting.