Future perfect

Influential, innovative and sometimes downright inscrutable, Miuccia Prada is without doubt Milan's most thought-provoking designer. After taking a trip to the picture-postcard Venice of the Fifties for inspiration last season, the fashion pack was eager to learn just where the 52-year-old style intellectual might head to for her latest look.

The painted backdrop at Tuesday's packed show suggested an interplanetary trip to Mars - complete with a space-suited couple heading off into the glittering red sunset - while the Peter And The Wolf soundtrack nodded confusingly towards Russia and tsarist exoticism. But of course when the lights came up the audience got a little taste of both Marsmeets-Russia and a whole lot more - combined with the confidence that only a woman behind a label with a turnover in excess of £450million a year can muster.

The influences may have been hard to pin down but the resulting collection was without doubt the best of the week so far.

Miuccia Prada's signature tie-dyes were given a futuristic update with hi-tech airbrushed stripes on pleat skirts and narrow-belted coats. Tweed dress coats were studded with bright patches of crystals and oriental brocades were run up into sumptuous jackets and skirts. Sheepskin coats were scattered with jewels, cableknit sweaters dip-dyed at the shoulders and exotic Technicolor landscapes applied to thick silk dresses - all to bewitching effect.

The forward-looking designer even pioneered a new calflength look for skirts and dresses that made the mix of old and new seem totally fresh.

And the all-important accessories? The label that made its name - and its fortune - with those subtle logos on nylon bags in the early Nineties sent out ladylike holdalls sprayed with its latest landscape prints, thin elasticated belts with tiny robot "dolls" hanging from the clasps, Russian-style astrakhan fur hats, dangerously high snakeskin wedge-heel shoes and flat crystal jewelled sandals - which are no doubt destined to be some of next season's musthave items.