Everything's coming up roses

Miuccia Prada says her red-roses dress is "so feminine and dramatic". Picture / Reuters

What do the flowers on your skirt say about you? Are you, for example, playing a faux-naive fashion game, wearing tomato-red appliqued with the type of rainbow-coloured psychedelic blooms that might be more at home decorating the set of The Magic Roundabout?

Or is this a more sophisticated sartorial moment, more suited to passion, in which case a full-blooded and blood-red rose might be the order of the day.

Moody? Melancholic? Why not mix a washed-pink, retro floral print with more roses, this time as black as the night?

Or maybe madam might like to indulge in more typically English eccentric floral fashions, and wear clothes cut in fabrics that came from grandma's Chesterfield.

And you thought it was all so simple. The world's most influential designers have clearly thought long and hard about flowers they think we might want to wear next winter.

For her main line, Miuccia Prada turned to that most traditional and dramatic of flowers, the red rose, for inspiration. All too often, this designer is pigeon-holed as intellectual - she is, in fact, the first to admit that a frock can only very rarely be such a thing.

Her use of floral embroidery and prints this northern autumn points to a less obvious, emotional side: like all the great designers, Prada's approach is, first and foremost, instinctive.

"You have to move forward," she says, "and try new things, or avant-garde things, but keeping the humanity, the beauty. If you want to propose a beautiful, dignified woman, and a very sensual woman also, you can't experiment too much with shape.

"There's a strong feeling of romance just now, but it's coming from a darker place. You know, for years I didn't want to declare any of my personal feelings. I was always involved emotionally, but I tried to hide my feelings. Now, I've decided that, just as a step for myself, I should open up and declare myself more."

Prada's rise to fame went hand in hand with the advent of 90s minimalism, and, as she points out, "with minimalism, you can hide everything, your emotions, your ideas".

This is not the case now, however.

"I really had to force myself, but with this last collection came an opening up of my real personality."

Who would have thought that the great lady might like to say it with flowers? "Yes, a symptom of opening up was definitely those roses," she confirms.

Then, laughing: "I had to be brave to put flowers in my shows. God, those red roses especially, they're so feminine and dramatic. To me, that was being very brave."

Meanwhile, the mood over at Miu Miu, Prada's more playful little sister line, is lighter, taking forward the exaggerated, even cartoonish hippie motifs of spring/summer, and with them a certain innocence that seems sweet and pretty just now.

But Prada being Prada - and a designer who works more intensely at reinterpreting female dress codes and, in particular, sexuality than any other - all is not quite as simple as it seems.

The slightly dowdy good looks that she is famous for are at play here, too, in the ultra-square cut of the skirt, and any whimsy is also brought down to earth by the addition of an oversized masculine cardigan.

In the end, trust Miuccia Prada to hold the key to this particular fashion formula. And that is? Wearing your heart on your floral-print sleeve is all well and good, but it is possible to overdo things.

Wear flowers head to toe if you're hell-bent on making the most dramatic of all feminine fashion statements. In real as opposed to fashion life, however, it may be best to remember that a little goes an awfully long way.

- INDEPENDENT