Backstage at the SS24 Prada show in Milan, surrounded by journalists, Miuccia Prada put the record straight: “I got tired talking about ideas — let’s talk about clothes.” But the clothes that she and Raf Simons presented spoke for themselves, offering up enough ideas and craftsmanship to warrant a thesis on the codes and concepts of Prada, both then and now. In true Prada fashion, this was a collection about paradoxes – although it always is, so much so the house named its new fragrance after the word – replete with tensions between diametrically opposed concepts: lightness and darkness, masculine and feminine, weightless movement and structural gravitas, strength and fragility, utilitarianism and decoration. The backdrop to the show – Alien-like slime trickling through the ceiling, forming gloopy piles on the peach-coloured steel floors — was coupled with Bernard Herrman’s distinctive score for Vertigo; the result a paradox in and of itself: sci-fi futurism meets vintage Hitchcockian suspense.
So many great clothes, so much to discuss. There were hints of 1920s flapper girls, dropped-waist dresses with swaying lashings of fringe, a motif that Diana Vreeland famously prophesied occurs at moments of political change, and sometimes appearing as cowboy tassels, Hawaiian shirts or gladiator belts. Lightness! Movement! Fluidity! There were gossamer straps of organza-like material, a Japanese-developed fabric that Prada owns the patent for, diaphanously floating around girls resembling ghostly candyfloss mummies. There were hardy 1940s-via-1980s menswear silhouettes, classic grey and navy suits with wide, perpendicular shoulders and abbreviated romper shorts — only to be cinched by belts with jewellery-like metallic fringing dangling like skirts. There were also Prada-fied Barbour jackets, those symbols of utilitarian country life, their hems frayed and waxed cotton artfully weather-beaten, as well as hand-carved mythological-figure clasps adorning bags, reproductions of those designed in 1913 by Miuccia’s grandfather, who travelled the world collecting objects, and who she described as “very eccentric”. The apple clearly doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Prada is one of the few houses where you can talk about clothes till the cows come home. Elsewhere, buzzwords are deployed by designers to distract from what them — ‘luxury’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘reality’, blah, blah, blah — but none more so than ‘craftsmanship’, the X amount of hours and artisans weaponised as a means of justifying banal clothes. Prada has never had to talk about craftsmanship because it is inherent — we all know it’s Made in Italy by the best artisans, so why shout about it? — and instead has always focused on ideas and design. Except this time, Raf made a point of highlighting the innovation in the ateliers. “We wanted to show what we could do,” he explained, before asserting that how long it took is irrelevant. Instead, what matters is that they were able to push themselves to create something new, like the eyelet-strewn silk fringing and patched-together leather and panné velvets and recycled nylons with 1930s-style swirling fireworks of crystals, difficult for copycats to pull off.
The show marked a bittersweet moment as Fabio Zambernardi, the design director of Prada and Miu Miu, and Mrs P’s closest, longest-standing collaborator, announced his departure this year after three decades at the house. He joined Raf and Miuccia for a bow, receiving teary applause backstage. The collection felt like an ode to decades of creative alchemy between him and Mrs P, the result of which has shaped fashion as we know it — look closely and there are references to their past collections hidden in plain sight. It was a reminder that behind every item of clothing is an endless conversation. You can picture Miuccia, Raf and Fabio discussing every detail, down to the clasps on bags. The result of those conversations is clothes that possess a magical quality, the kind of spellbinding fashion that Prada has always been known for — and judging by this collection, remains devoted to creating.
