It turned wedding dresses into daywear
A low ceiling hovered uncomfortably over our heads in a blackened-out Fondazione Prada space where vague searchlights created an eerie atmosphere pre-show. The world was closing in on us. As the show began, the ceilings mechanically elevated and gave room and light to Fondazione Prada and Raf Simons’s proposal: a wedding day – or, rather, a wedding every day. “We take pieces from a special occasion, or created for one day like a wedding gown, and here it becomes everyday. Why should this celebration of love be for only a single day?” Simons said. The idea unfolded in the delicately embroidered and appliquéd white lace skirts and pumps that opened the show, styled with very normal jumpers and oversized blazers, and in the bridalised white shirts, T-shirts and bowling shirts that appeared mid-show, elongated into gowns with trains.
Between the claustrophobic ceilings and the ceremonious dress, the message Prada and Simons were trying to convey was pretty clear: you only live once – enjoy it while you can. In the same week as Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the nuclear arms act, that idea no longer resonates as some silly truism. As Prada reflected, “Reality is rich. Real life is much more rich than any fantasy. And therefore more important. For me, the real meaning of what we do is to bring importance to the everyday. Everyday life deserves beautiful things. Because every day of life counts.” Next to the bridal elements, her collection imbued the everyday with beauty through fabric gestures and volumes borrowed from haute couture but worked into decidedly normal and practical materials.
Prada and Simons abstracted outerwear
The designers’ elevation of everyday garments inspired a study of “the stereotypes of outerwear”, as Simons called them: how to make extraordinary the pieces that feel most desirable to us as customers. It generated expressions like a white skirt and top padded to new proportions. “It was interesting to see how they could architecturally evolve,” Simons said. “Because we’re so into reality, and because we’ve seen so many variations on these pieces over the years, we wanted to make the effort to see if we could push it into something new.” It manifested in elongated outerwear silhouettes that played with proportion, supersizing the upper parts of garments and minimising the lower.
It celebrated the uniforms of everyday workers
The focus on the everyday made for a collection that lionised the prosaic. “There is the notion in fashion that only glamour is important. I hate that; I have always fought against that. This collection is about finding beauty everywhere, beauty of different kinds,” Prada said. “We are focused on reality for political reasons. What’s important now is the value of jobs: to give importance to simple jobs.” An oft-heard statement from the lips of Prada, she acted on her belief in garments that paid homage to the wardrobes of everyday jobs: codes from the uniforms of medicine, education and security. As they tend to do, the tonal ties and shirts, big square epaulettes and breast-pocket dresses in Einheit colours evoked a somewhat collectivist look that also felt a bit unnerving.
It was about appreciating what we take for granted
Of their study of uniforms, Prada said it was about care: “We looked at uniforms that represent care, like nurses, because the act of caring is a beautiful thing. We wanted to transform these uniforms of caring into uniforms of beauty.” Simons concurred: “These typical uniform garments, connected to the everyday world, are usually seen as minor. Unconsidered. So, for this collection, we liked the idea of considering them, celebrating them. We can give them an importance – because those garments are important, the wearers are important, the action is important. Their lives.” Asked which social or political situations had particularly inspired this focus on care, the designers both answered “everything”. “What I’m fixated on is giving respect to working people – and not superficiality,” Prada reiterated.
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