A model presents a creation from Prada's 2012 Autumn/Winter collection in Milan during Milan Fashion Week February 23, 2012. [Photo/Agencies]

With their bandit eyes and ironed hair tipped in white or black, the models in Miuccia Prada's latest show looked fierce indeed. "Strange creatures," Ms. Prada said backstage. The women looked otherworldly, yet also in step with Prada's sartorial history and its plays on formality and beauty. This collection related strongly to Ms. Prada's fall men's line; both were presented on a huge, richly colored carpet (the men's on red, the women's on purple with a black and white geometric pattern), and both emphasized tailoring in wool or jacquards and silk prints evocative of old carpet designs.

Yet the women's clothes were more embellished than we've seen from Prada in a while?- with clusters of chunky beadwork down the backs of coats, on the fronts of sleeveless jackets or around the cuffs of cropped trousers. Ms. Prada's newest shape is a long sleeveless coatdress worn with trousers; it appeared in both solids and in graphic jacquards or prints. She also showed cropped jackets with matching mid-calf skirts wrapped over trousers, and belted coats. Shoes were embellished and came in multiple hues, and lace-ups had a bright, clownish platform. The long silhouette of the coats (or coatdresses) was very appealing, but so were her many pants suits — they had a fitted, jivey look of the late 1960s or early '70s.