At a time when all fashion advertisements are beginning to look the same, you can always count on Miuccia Prada to keep things interesting. Her new campaign for Spring/Summer 08 reflects the sweet optimism of her collection shown last September in Milan. It could have come right out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with all its nymphs and fairies.

Remarking on Prada’s dramatic move away from tougher designs in seasons past, Sarah Mower said "when Miuccia is fed up with being perverse in the anarchic-fierce way, she’ll change tack yet again and go against the grain by being so sweetly unchallenging you (almost) can’t recognize her." 

But are things as rosy for Prada on the IPO front?

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If rumours floating around Paris yesterday are on the ball, then PPR’s Francois-Henri Pinault has now got his acquisitive eyes fixed on Clarins.

The French cosmetics company saw its stock jump 7.7% on the speculation that PPR would make a bid for company in the coming days, pushing its market capitalisation to more than 2.6b euros. This rumour follows previous speculation that L’Oreal would make a bid for Clarins, after the death of its founder Jacques Courtin-Clarins in March of this year.

Acquisition rumours like this are a dime a dozen. But, this one might actually have some legs. An industry insider sitting next to me at last evening’s Walpole Awards said that attempts to reach PPR and Clarins to comment had been completely futile. Neither party had confirmed or denied the rumours – it was just radio silence and phones were just not being answered. It was precisely because of this that he was thinking twice about whether these rumours deserved more serious attention.

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