Overwhelmed? Whether it’s the news, the algorithm, the weather—you name it—there’s a lot coming at us these days. Backstage at Prada, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons were feeling it—and not just because of the crush of people eager for a photo or a soundbite, though it really was a crush this season. “Everything is so hardcore in the world right now,” Simons said. In a Fondazione stripped down to its concrete columns, with only a glossy orange floor for decoration, they crafted a “response to the overload of contemporary culture” that was off-kilter in particularly Prada-ish ways.
Off-kilter to start because few of us see in the plainness and rigidity of a military uniform the promise of freedom, and yet the show opened and closed with officer’s shirts and pants, their regularness disrupted by a set of drop earrings from the label’s new fine jewelry line, a top handle lady bag, or a pair of elbow-length satin opera gloves. Simons reminded us that his father was a night watchman, so his associations with uniforms are different from most. Also off-kilter were the unlikely combinations. Was that a polo pony embroidered on the sporty jacket worn with a button-down and a taffeta bubble skirt? No, it was a Prada crest, but the intimation was unavoidable and quite cheeky. This was a banner collection for Prada skirt collectors. A couple of knee-length styles patchworked from different fabrics and with a flurry of ruffles at one knee were especially pretty.
It was off-kilter most of all because of the way the clothes were designed to fit—maybe designed not to fit is a better way of putting it. Early on, there were bra tops made without any elastic below the bustline, offering coverage but not support. Towards the end, they became mere suggestions of bras—bralike in shape, but floating off the body, not clinging to it or shaping it as such things are usually intended.
The away-from-the-body idea extended to other skirts attached to suspenders; those left the midriff exposed between those non-bra bras and bloomer shorts (also seen at the brand’s recent men’s show). It’s not often that designers catch us off guard with an entirely new shape, but these suspender skirts qualified. Simons explained they were trying to move away from the “sculptural” aspects of clothes. The embellished dirndl dresses surprised because of their would-be conventionality. They might’ve been a callback to Prada’s own younger days, when she rejected bourgeois conventions of dress for more audacious ideas.
Though there are always Prada-isms on other brands’ runways, for one reason or another (maybe the algorithm?) this season has produced more than we typically see. Together Prada and Simons stay a step (or three) ahead: they’re just freer.
