The Washington Post ran Prada's 1996 collection under the headline Plug Ugly
Prada (@prada)'s spring 1996 collection was called Banal Eccentricity: 74 exits in Milan on 1 October 1995, in avocado, ochre, chartreuse and a brown one critic placed at the colour of stagnant water. Miuccia Prada's own description was the good taste of bad taste. Robin Givhan wrote it up in the Washington Post under the headline Plug Ugly, listing cheesy fabrics, loathsome colours and obnoxious patterns. The part worth keeping is the cloth. Some of those cheap-looking domestic prints were laid onto cotton and linen tweed, so the fabric was imitating tweed while the print imitated a curtain. Miuccia called the effect fake-cheap. And the title was a citation rather than a mood: Studio Alchimia had shown Oggetto Banale at the 1980 Venice Biennale, arguing that nothing new needed inventing. Givhan won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2006. The Met titled a gallery Ugly Chic in 2012. Prada put the prints back on its own runway in 2018.