Yes, skinny jeans might be back with a big stamp of approval in the brand’s latest show. But it goes deeper than that.
Can Prada be anti-fashion? Probably not, considering it just hosted a megawatt Spring/Summer 2027 show in Milan with Louis Partridge, Jordan Firstman and Troye Sivan all in attendance, with screaming fans outside – that’s Capital ‘F’ fashion firing on all cylinders. But it can certainly recalibrate how fashion functions in our lives right now.
Inside the Fondazione Prada, the show space was stripped back to its bones. Concrete walls lay bare, as did the floor, only covered by a glass layer. The rows of benches that snaked around the room were clear, too. And booming from the high-production sound system was a countdown. Was it a bit jarring? Absolutely. But it was a visual and aural depiction of a slate being wiped clean, of a new agenda about to be set.
Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the brand’s Co-Creative directors, were in the pursuit of clarity. “The ambition was to do something new with nothing – against exaggeration, against complex material. Against useless design”, they shared in a statement. “There is nothing that I hate more in this period than useless design – this collection expresses this concept.”
For its Spring/Summer 2027 collection that meant body-clinging denim jeans and jackets in luminary white, layered with wide-lapelled single-breasted suits. There were leather sets matching the same figure-hugging silhouettes in subdued pinks and cool greens. Then came white, scoop-necked long-sleeved T-shirts, all paired with slim, strappy leather shoes.
Later, Peter Pan collar biker jackets were matched with slim trousers in greys, maroons, and browns, some stuffed underneath sweater vests in a Josh-O’Connor-meets-The-Hellp kind of way. Yes, the full black leather pairings did look a touch moody. And yes the Simons-isms were strong. The designer was early on to skinny jeans, incorporating them into his Spring/Summer 1998 ‘Black Palms’ collection. It was one of the few times that denim appeared in a Raf Simons show, intended to reflect a punky, rebellious and utilitarian attitude. Yesterday, this silhouette shouted out with the same unruly angst at Prada.
Then came a swathe of deep belly button-grazing V-necks and clashing patterned vests and trousers. These traditional Prada tropes were followed up by more slimmed-down worker-leaning denim sets in grey and later in sheer white offerings, almost X-raying the utility of a five pocket jean and a jacket with inner drop pockets, and spotlighting the vulnerability of the body in the world without these practical garments. And bags, while sparse, were kept small and attached to the belt loops with a carabiner. There was an air of uninterrupted hedonism to a lot of these looks, grounded with an underlying utility and simplicity, primed for kids Lime biking to far flung rave spots as on Friday nights, as much as they were fuss-free problem solvers. In short these were clothes for getting shit done.
Prada is often seen as a temperature check on where fashion is going by grounding it within the context of the world we’re in. Today’s slimmed-down silhouette was provocative in a menswear landscape that is revelling in pooling suiting and massive man bags. But what if right now, in a volatile environment of change and uncertainty, the best thing in your wardrobe isn’t the indulgent suit you wear on special occasions, or the flex-y bag, but the stuff you rock on the daily and lead with your best foot forward? Prada certainly thinks so. And yes, skinny jeans might just be back.
