Milan Menswear: Prada’s New Disrupted Beauty

Leave it to Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons to overturn the whole Italian menswear fashion season, with the best show, slickest collection and coolest clothes, in a subtle comment on our current political predicament.
 

See fashion show

The convulsions of Gaza, Ukraine and even Minnesota echoed in giant new set inside Prada’s mammoth show-space. A massive series of building facades, porticos, doors, marble fireplaces and broken walls. A set that echoed artists Robert Matta Clark’s “anarchitecture” sculptures composed by breaking into derelict buildings to create new perspectives. Unsettling, yet magnificent, just like this Autumn-Winter 26 collection unveiled Sunday.
 
A collection created in the slimmest of silhouettes, a superb series of strict coats in speckled Donegal tweed, midnight blue serge; micro herring bone; or second skin leather. Cut with the softest of shoulders and finished below the knee, they were a counterblast to all the exaggerated volume that has dominated Italian catwalks this week. Some were so slim, they made a Hedi Slimane suit look like a sumo wrestler.

The clothes suggested a call for purity of form, of unearthing beauty or deconstructing to find the essence. Rather like the set – with its cracked brick and scores of houses bereft of any furniture.
 

See fashion show

As the show progressed, fabrics became more distressed – again like the set. Several eroded trenches at the finale, looked like they had brick beneath the fabric. Leather car coats seemed made of cracked plaster. While several tops were printed like Delft dishes or foreign landscapes.
 
An elegant yet stylishly subversive collection, as the duo inverted masculine codes, and politicians dress. Cutting the collars of classic striped shirts; chain cufflinks dangling from French cuffs. Playing all sorts of tricks with gentlemanly or military hats – in atypical fabrics. Ironing them eccentrically or even sewing hats onto the shoulders.
 
“This was a very uncomfortable collection to create. Either you talk about the world now, or you talk about fashion. So, putting the two things together in this moment is very uncomfortable,” mused Miuccia Prada, attired in a golden slip dress, chocolate brown sweater and antique jewelry earrings.
 
The duo’s solution, she explained, was to celebrate beauty, and innovate sustainably. And to look for what’s essential. Like Prada’s fantastic new cardinal’s ecclesiastical cappa, finished with multi pockets. Made in bright green or yellow cotton, and worn over trench coats, they looked subtle yet revolutionary. 
 

See fashion show

Many looks were anchored by urban trail boots, ideal for a little agit-prop. Which kind of brought the collection right back to Raf Simons’ earliest signature shows, youthquake manifestations in the 90s. Albeit with a very different aesthetic.
 
“For me, personally, there has been moments in my career that I thought, what am I doing? I’m making clothes when there are so many other things could be done. But then you feel in the street, people reacting wherever you go. So, the intellectually honest thing that we have to do is our jobs the best we can. Bringing creativity, bringing quality, bringing understanding,” concluded Raf.