From Nicole Phelps at Vogue:
“Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s new partnership is unprecedented in fashion. When it was announced last February, the industry reacted with surprise and delight. In the seven months since, nothing about it has proceeded according to formula. The coronavirus prevented the designers from setting to work on Simons’s appointed start day of April 1, which condensed the time they had to produce their debut.
And ongoing regulations limiting group size and concerns about safety meant a splashy show at the Prada Fondazione was out of the question. Instead we all gathered in front of our screens today and watched a collection of 40 looks unfold on Prada.com. The usual backstage scrum afterward was replaced by “a conversation”—a sort of open-source interview in which Miuccia and Simons thoughtfully answered handpicked questions solicited on Instagram and submitted online. (IRL shows may return, but these two will never go back to reporters pressing iPhones in their faces again.)
The collaborators both have a big thing for statement outerwear, and the many clutch coats peppered throughout the lineup in solids and florals nodded in both of their directions: The gesture looked simultaneously like Miuccia—see: any number of bow shots over the years—and like Simons’s moving swan song at Jil Sander circa 2012. Prada and Simons devotees will pore over this collection in search of references and callbacks.
They were certainly there if you looked: The “ugly prints” of Prada’s era-defining spring 1996 show reemerged on hoodies and matching full skirts (another new uniform, this one tailored to our new WFH reality), while the words and graphics silk-screened on pastel satin shift dresses linked this collection with two-plus decades of Simons’s personal work. The holey turtlenecks used as layering pieces throughout were a good idea lifted from his brief Calvin Klein foray.
This was always going to be the show of the season. Two of fashion’s most respected and beloved auteurs uniting in a single mission: to reaffirm the primacy of creativity in high fashion. “At this moment, lots of creatives feel troubled, feel the fashion industry is [becoming] an industry where it might move to excluding creatives,” Simons said at their joint press conference in February. “We do believe that collaborating could reposition that aspect of the business.” But COVID-19 has changed the industry in yet new ways.”
Notes have been condensed for clarity.
