A pentimento is a visible trace on the surface of a canvas that reveals the detail of an earlier, obscured image layered under the current one. When art conservators or investigators hunting to establish the provenance of an uncatalogued work discover them, a pentimento can entirely transform contemporary perception of the image under scrutiny.
“If you lick layers away, you reveal beauty,” Raf Simons said immediately after a menswear collection that imposed referential pentimenti, or the suggestion of them, across his and Miuccia Prada’s masculine wardrobe proposal for next winter. “There was an aspect of archeology in our minds,” he added. Many garments were marked with folds, rumples and wrinkles which suggested that as much as they were new, these objects were also unearthed—deadstock or attic-stuffed relics that had first been excavated, then interrogated, then used as catalysts for and embodiments of seasonal renewal.
An opening section of soft-shouldered, narrowly-cut overcoats both single- and double-breasted recalled the high-collared, lean elegance of the house’s classic silhouette. Sometimes the models wore them with jaunty, vaguely maritime hats that appeared to be attached to each coat, but mostly these hats were compressed flat against the back of the right shoulder of each garment like pressed flowers. Belted trenches in blue or beige gabardine came over-layered with more zippily colored cloaklets constructed after technical raincoats and gilets; these were cut only as long as the storm flaps or the garments apparently beneath them. These were sometimes matched with same-color sou’wester hats.
Two brown leather jackets, one long, one short, were thinly padded and bore a surface patina whose imperfect turmoil suggested they had been scrunched, folded, and subjected to an earlier life. A trio of double-bonded rain resistant belted overcoats in tones of mushroom, rose and aubergine showed the compressed outline of their plackets, pocket structure and fastenings on the surface of their square-folded upper layering. Two single-breasted mac/car coats and a blouson had the most evident pentimenti of all: Their matte single color surfaces were crumbled at the collar and seam to reveal a houndstooth check beneath.
A knit in red and charcoal and some white cotton undershirts were cut with low square necklines that made them resemble bibs or aprons. Various pieces had elongated shirt cuffs that protruded unfastened by their square stone cufflinks through the sleeves of this collection’s outwear. A white shirt was spackled with dark spots and shadows as if marked by time, smoke, ironing, or a long-ago coffee spill that had never been effectively laundered out. In the hustling hubbub of the post-show comments, Mrs. Prada discussed, or at least seemed to, the knowledge of crafting expensive clothes for rich people that would “maybe often be ruined” through use or lack of care: These garments held up the beauty of that ruination.
Maybe it was an unconscious effect of the currently viral 2016 flashback craze, but a shirt printed with a still life floral over which was pinned a panel printed with a Delft-style galleon at full sail seemed to echo (along with the hats) Mrs. Prada’s show from exactly a decade ago: Sometimes it was hard to discern between the real and phantom relics embedded in this collection.
Another phantom stalking this collection was a sense of heaviness and helplessness regarding the bleakness of geopolitical factors way beyond the margins of fashion, and environmental factors within them. Mrs. Prada said: “I’m comfortable to be honest, to do my job seriously and try to make it in the best possible sustainable way. Because the real sustainability is that we should close everything: no cars, no clothes, consuming nothing. So there is a lot of hypocrisy about this… In that sense I stay intellectually honest by saying that we have to do our job the best we can. Bringing creativity, bringing quality, bringing understanding.” Underneath this collection’s beautifully ruined surfaces lurked a further pentimento of suppressed agitprop.
