One thing she could definitely do was challenge convention in the sly, subversive way that has always been one of the most forceful arguments for Prada's influence. The influence may have waned a little of late—sales have been off—but this show unfolded with the growing sensation that Miuccia was playing once more to her strengths, especially her ability to evoke, then upend, the familiar. What first made her famous, in other words. Opera gloves and fur stoles, brooches and bows, ponytails and kitten heels, Empire lines and pantsuits painted a picture of a Nixon-era debutante. The fact that the stole was abstracted into an attached strip of fur, or the brooches were cut from Perspex, or the gloves were all colors of leather, or the dresses and suits were molded from that peculiar fabric all added up to Prada's Factor X, the acid Miuccia added to her pastel punch. We tripped.