Prada Leaned Into Instinct, Spontaneity for Fall 2025 Menswear
“Creativity without overthinking” was Miuccia Prada’s deep thought in press notes for the fall 2025 menswear show, and during the press scrum afterwards she answered an innocuous question about the starting point for the collection with another question, “What did you see?”
Well, we saw caveman collars of fluffy, but raggedly cut shearling; thrift-shop and vintage tablecloth florals and plaids on shrunken T-shirts, trench coats and offbeat freestanding hoods; leather bowling bags so weathered they might have seen tournaments since the ’60s; truly homely brown sweaters, and narrow dress pants and pajama bottoms tugged over colorful cowboy boots.
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This was a rather downbeat, hodgepodge of a Prada collection, riffing on the brand’s legendary “ugly-chic” aesthetic in a freewheeling, cinematic way that seemed to take in the East Village and Haight-Ashbury, “The Flintstones,” spaghetti westerns, “Fargo” and the entire catalog of the late David Lynch, king of the illogical and the bizarre.
Everything about the show seemed designed to upset preconceived notions, including the towering set of spindly scaffolding that trembled under the weight of the spectators as they scrambled to their seats, adding a frisson of unease.
Speaking alongside her co-creative director Raf Simons backstage, Prada explained their approach as a reproach to AI, which keeps creeping into new corners of our lives. “This is how to again go into humanity, passion, instinct,” she said, describing “a naive or spontaneous way of choosing things.”
“Things can come together, even if they seem like they’re not supposed to maybe be together,” Simons added. “We do not want to limit ourselves… Our aim was to make it feel warm and human and instinctive, but also beautifully domestic in a way.”
He acknowledged the western twang to many of the clothes, including sweaters trimmed with sleeve fringe or smile pockets. “Yes, but we don’t want them to look like cowboys, even if there’s a lot of cowboy boots,” Simons said.
Likewise, the set, with its plastic split curtains at the entrance, Art Nouveau carpeting and roving colored lights fell somewhere between a 1920s ballroom and a present-day warehouse party.
This abbreviated Milan men’s season – the first fashion week to unfurl amid a slowdown exacerbated by so-called “greedflation” – is seeing designers and brands groping for new definitions of luxury. It’s all about matte fabrics for some; shiny or glossy ones for others.
And that’s why the Prada brand continues to fascinate, here presenting scuffed shoes, rumpled bags and what sometimes looked like charity shop finds alongside superbly tailored wool overcoats, sumptuous suede blazers and neat nylon bomber jackets.
One journalist suggested the shuddering set could be a metaphor for the wobbly state of the fashion industry today. Maybe it was just to subtly underscore that shaking things up is Prada’s basic instinct?
Launch Gallery: Prada Men's Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
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