Walking into one of Milan’s fancier hotels after the Bottega Veneta show I almost collided in the revolving doors with a woman in The Uniform: mink bomber jacket, tight jeans, blonde hair, saucer-sized sunglasses.

It’s what lots of women wear in this city, although she was the first I’ve seen sporting a T-shirt with the initials VD emblazoned across it. On closer inspection, the T-shirt turned out to be by the Russian designer Valentino Yudashkin, but the rest of his name was somewhere under that mink bomber. The monogram business is a minefield. Even if one’s initials are innocuous in one’s own tongue, how can one know for sure that they aren’t an acronym for something unpleasant in another?

Bottega’s principle of not slapping logos on its products is an attempt to distinguish it from other luxury brands, but you’d have to be green not to recognise these clothes for the ultra-pricey indulgences they are.

It’s not just the precision tailoring, the cocktail frock composed entirely of chiffon petals or the knee-length sleeveless dresses that silently scream “expensive”, but the fabrics, from gleaming silk gabardines to plush tweeds with a hint of a sheen.

It is probably safe to say that the woman at the hotel wasn’t a natural Prada customer. Miuccia Prada doesn’t do uniforms (unless they’re vaguely fascistic, and ironic) and she certainly doesn’t do sexy, at least not in the conventional sense.

It’s odd though, because at her show last night — one of the most anticipated and the most thought-provoking — the models wore lots of sheer lace, in black, gold, blue, camel and brown, with little else, apart from buttoned-up mens’ shirts and bib fronts; the shirt-tails providing a fig-leaf of modesty over their bottoms. Presumably this will be modified by the time it reaches the shops — and if not, the streets of this country will not be a pretty sight. But this was by far the best show of the season. It sounds nerdish to get worked up about a fabric, but Prada managed to spin a whole new aesthetic from her lace, which is more usually associated with brides, babies and hookers, mixing heavy woollen guipure lace with lighter, finer lace, and even silk dresses screen-printed to look like lace. This allowed her to keep shapes simple: slim or slightly flared skirts and fitted sheath tops. Hips were exaggerated with detachable padded belts, allowing women to play with their silhouettes. Nice idea, but most women don’t need to pad their hips.

As ever there were the jolie laide aspects — shoes with leather ruffles that looked like cauliflowers and ruffled bags that, had they been done by a naff designer, would be no-nos. The results were beautifully stark and tough, tapping into a sombre vein that seems to be taking hold in fashion. And it turns out Miuccia Prada doesn’t even like lace — too twee, which of course was the challenge. “People keep talking about the return of minimalism” she said backstage, “but it has to have a twist now. I hope it works — we had the whole of Switzerland working night and day to produce enough lace”.

The models didn’t vamp it up. They walked like androids, with painted eyebrows and lips that almost melted into their faces. Mind you, there was a perverse frisson running through this collection. Besides, given that the newsreaders here look like Monica Bellucci with added lip-liner, not looking sexy can seem positively refreshing.

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