by Alex Fury

Miuccia Prada has an eye for the perverse. Her work is about inversion and parody, making otherwise dowdy garments desirable, while simultaneously taking the sex out of sexy.

These socks and shoes are a prime example of Prada's play with attire. At first glance, there could be nothing sexy about the items themselves - cable-knit woollen socks, square-toed loafers with a sensible block heel, in a colour palette more pensioner than Prada.

But if we take the fifties cartoon theme of Prada's collection as our basis, it's an easy jump to see Prada's cable-knit as a postmodern take on the sexy seamed stocking, twisting that erogenous line to the the front and rendering it inch-thick. This fits with the collection's pop art play on proportion - Prada inflated breasts with ruffles and blew up lingerie ribbon bows in patent leather, and these stocking seams are recreated as into a braided wool trim that could be read at twenty paces, exaggerated like a cartoon character.

After the Prada menswear show in January - which was shown in the same space and with the same backdrop of an postmodern imaginary city as the womenswear collection these socks and shoes are taken from - many commented on the seventies feel to the clothing offered. Although this collection looked back further, mainly to the 1950s and the influential silhouette of Christian Dior's New Look, the double-face cashmere suiting, sludgy colour palette and especially accessories had a touch of that seventies feel. What many commentators missed in the menswear show was that Miuccia Prada was referencing her own body of work. This was the 1970s via the 1990s, a revival revived. The shoes here could be from Prada's 'Geek Chic' 1996 collection, in trademark Prada 'off-colours' of mustard, turquoise and mauve melange knit.

As with those mid-nineties collections, these shoes and socks are an obscure object of desire. They are a reflection of the power of the Prada name to render something desirable - in the same way that Miuccia Prada can slice a handbag from cheap transparent plastic, leave the edges of a gazar jacket raw and unraveling, or embellish a cashmere coat with strips of photographic film like postmodern pailettes. Prada's power is in questioning the true value of luxury and subjugating it to her aesthetic whim. You pay for Prada - not for name or even for the garment, but for her faultless judgement of contemporary taste.