Tribute to Las Meninas and Velazquez

Agatha Ruiz de la Prada with her designs pays tribute once again to Diego Velázquez, the brilliant, Spanish Golden Age painter and one of the world's Old Masters, whose most outstanding works are part of the permanent collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Velázquez's shapes, volumes, light and especially his meninas are the basis of the collection that Agatha presents on the Milan Fashion Week for the spring-summer 2009 season.

"Dressed up as a menina you become the belle of the ball."

Agatha reinterprets in this 2009 collection the menina-shaped outfits, the dresses with crinolines and bulky volumes of the Baroque, adapting them to today's woman, with a point of mischief and naivety and much optimism.

The distinguished infantas and ladies-in-waiting are the stars again of the "agathist" catwalks.

"I have been designing menina dresses for three decades now because I love them; I find them supersexy".

This typical "Velazquenian" image is accentuated even more by using headdresses and back combs as those worn by the ladies painted by Velázquez. Opened hand fans placed as headpieces producing a markedly Spanish, theatrical and almost folkloric effect.

Agatha combines new ideas with more traditional proposals, mixing plastic with silk, cotton with precious satin jacquard from the best craftsmen in Valencia.

Puckered tulle, patchwork, metal sheets, flowers... large bows or beads sewn on buoyant skirts.

Shoes with wedges or platforms, and spectacular plastic jewelry put a fun pop counterpoint to this "Velazquenian" look.

Everything goes to express the radical modernity of a proposal paradoxically based on the most orthodox painting.

As always, the avant-garde as counterpoint to classicism. Agatha’s way of seing, hearing and interpreting art.