Miuccia Prada goes primitive in Milan fashion parade

She is not dubbed the high priestess of Italian fashion for nothing. Miuccia Prada's shows are seen by some as near-religious experiences and on Tuesday night she delivered a collection that, the designer said, celebrated "primitivism and the clothes that women primitively want - bras and panties, gold and animal skin".

Sheath-dresses, bra tops and crumpled silk suits were embossed with prints of reptile skins and cave paintings in shades of tobacco and burnished gold. Prada's python-skin shoes, however, were so high that they caused two models to trip a la Naomi Campbell, who fell off her 10-inch platform boots at Vivienne Westwood's runway show in Paris in 1993.

Earlier in the day Raf Simons, the Belgian creative director at Jil Sander, presented a dramatic show that featured bold cut-outs and asymmetic hems. Other highlights of Tuesday's shows included Bottega Veneta, Salvatore Ferragamo and Blumarine