Review: At Milan Fashion Week, Prada Reimagines Femininity
Today’s Prada show setting was Brutalist meets baroque. At the Fondazione Prada on the outskirts of Milan, models walked on stark scaffolded runways, while the elaborate printed carpet was designed by costumer and frequent house collaborator Catherine Martin. Guests including Hunter Schafer, Simone Ashley, and Aespa’s Karina sat in the front row.
For fall/winter 2025, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons said that they wanted to interrogate the way femininity and beauty are defined. That made for a collection in which the ladylike (structured top-handle purses, sharp-edged pumps, full skirts) was mingled with the undone (mussed hair, structured sweatshirts, pajama dressing) as if to ask, how much of femininity is about looking “presentable?” And who are we doing that for?
Of course, Mrs. Prada has always been fascinated with dressing in a way that is antithetical to the male gaze, and here she delved into some of her longtime obsessions. Sack dresses, paperbag-waist skirts, and oversized jackets made for an intentionally anti-body-con silhouette. Even the clichéd tropes of “feminine” dressing were upended. There were bows, but flattened to the point of being a modernist statement. And florals, but rendered in Mrs. Prada’s signature intentionally ugly-cool way. As with several collections this season, the early ’60s, a transitional time in between ’50s conformity and hippie rebellion, wove themselves through many of the silhouettes.
The delight was in the eccentric details: strands of hair tucked into a necklace, charms dangling from the neckline of a sweater, or a twee minidress worn over baggy jeans. And we even got a Prada take on corpcore via an intricately twisted blue button-down teamed with an ultra-mini skirt.
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