At Prada, the beauty always lies in the details. Here are a few from this afternoon’s showing of the Spring/Summer 2020 women’s collection. The industrial hangar-like space in the Fondazione was striped with orange paint, the massive columns covered in gold foil, and the glossy floor hand-tiled in funky geometric patterns rendered in those deliberately naive off-pastels that, when thrown together, look fabulously sophisticated. It was nerdy and joyful, a mix of natural light and high gloss. And the same could be said for the eclectic and starry front row: here, Nicole Kidman; there, A$AP Rocky; and over yonder, Wes Anderson, whose museum show opens tomorrow night at the Prada complex, and who has long championed the sherbet hues. The first model out was Freja Beha Erichsen, the legendary cool girl of fashion so very Prada in her helplessly timeless hipness.
From the get-go, this was the brand in familiar yet intriguing top form. And then there were the clothes: spare, elegant, a smidgen ’70s, a hint ’50s, unabashedly adorned yet beguiling for the esoteric gals among us. The core items include a tailored jacket, long of line, fabulous in double-face, with belt loops that suggest a waist without being insistent; a dress in cheesecloth, slightly transparent and possibly finished with gold sequin swirls or a necklace of enormous shells; a skirt, pencil or pleated or in embroidered leather, that bisects the shins and is sleek as hell; serious grey wool trousers with a hint of a flare; and summer knits in stripes, chevrons, and skinny cables to keep everything close to the body—vaguely artisanal and graphic yet soft. For lovers of Prada, this is the dream wardrobe: elegant, irreverent, unapologetically pretty, and devoid of conceptual gimmicks. What makes it fresh is how it is worn: Every look involves a mix of textures (macramé, straw, velvet, calf, patent, rope, bugle beads, paillettes) and context (a waft-y beach dress with a solid pump, an office suit with a macramé holiday bag, a silk cocktail dress with a whopping snakeskin platform).
For Miuccia Prada, these juxtapositions mean everything for Spring. Her starting point for this collection was that “the person should be more important than the clothes,” and further, that “personal style is more important than clothes.” She was also hoping to make a point about simplicity, non-disposability, and “doing less.” Timeless hipness is the goal here: Invest wisely in a few items and wear how you like, anywhere and with anything. Grab some shells and call them pearls. Glossiness abounds, even in dark times.
