Prada's designer found herself caught in a bad romance at AW19 show in Milan

Wednesday Addams, Dana Scully and Frankenstein emerged as style icons at the Prada show last night as its designer found herself caught in a bad romance.

In a collection which spanned Dorothy shoes, capes borrowed from Grimms’ fairy tales and shearling trimmed deerstalker hats which concealed the faces of the models who wore them, the Italian fashion stalwart looked to create thrilling drama that conjured romance and fear - while luring a consumer of all ages to the Prada brand.

Miuccia Prada is a designer who thrives on contradictions and typically this offering was loaded with contrasts.

The set, a sponge-soft catwalk created from corrugated insulation boards, was juxtaposed with beaming white torch lights. The collection was a wearable incarnation of this idea of light and danger with rose print motifs and delicate applique flowers featuring in opposition to rubber soled boots and angular black tailoring. A series of exquisite herringbone dresses, which were among the show's finest inclusions, were juxtaposed with string vests and cobweb lace cardigans. The designer also unveiled sublime lace cocktail dresses over vibrant PVC skirts.

After the show, Prada confirmed Wednesday Addams as the inspiration for the jet black plaits and stripe sleeve tops that featured alongside lace slip dresses.

Certainly, her chosen soundtrack - a heavy metal mashup of hits from everything from the Sound of Music to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance - suggested popular culture had not been far from her mind whilst she was creating it.

Of course for Miuccia Prada, an intellectual designer, the collection was about much more than evoking a moment of cinematic nostalgia. This was an examination of love and goodness in a dark world. “The girls were pieces of love stories, an idea of goodness in a world that has a lot of bad,” she said. “My worries are violence, racism, extremism in Europe. I was thinking about all of that.”

For Prada, whose fashion shows are riddles to those determined to decode them, this was a simplistic but effective explanation.

Undoubtedly, it's a universal message that will speak to more than just the high Prada consumer when the collection lands in stores in the autumn.

While Prada may be out of the price range of many, its influence is vast. Among the many pieces set to capture the attention of the wider fashion world next season is a graphic rose dress, a black Herman Munster sweater and a pair of red crystal encrusted court shoes, which looked just as apt on Prada's catwalk as they did in the Wizard of Oz.