Prada’s bedtime story

A collision between minimalism and couture. The recovery of Prada codes and a new essentiality. Dry, stripped-down pieces. Biker leather in a suit and paper-based fabrics with a lived-in, naïve spirit. Even on the runway there is the perfume of Paradoxe, citing the new fragrance signed by the Milan-based fashion house with the face of Emma Watson, who was supposed to attend the show but was held up by an unforeseen event. Nevertheless, the circle closes perfectly around the triangle-fetish of the super graphic logo, which returns in a less blatant way, in line with a very sharp vision.

«There is no room for superfluous or complicated structures. Nothing senseless. The unprocessed and the crudeness represent absolute simplicity. We wanted to create something using one of the most humble and modest materials: paper». This is how Miuccia Prada described the collection created in collaboration with Belgian designer Raf Simons, in a crash between traces of barely hinted décor and that intimacy, domestic, almost nightwear inspiration that permeates the items. They are the new sleep dresses reminiscent of the 1990s and of rock girls such as Kate Moss and Courtney Love, but in a mix of fabrics, between transparencies and some lace doubling. In faux naïve colors from Madonna’s Bedtime Story, for a tale that happens in a special place.

No heist disguised as a TV series, even if what has been imagined by Amo for the set is a casa de papel, with videos and short films about women and a fluid modern femininity made by director Nicolas Winding Refn, head of the Danish film school with fellow director Lars von Trier, and who directed cult films such as Drive and The Neon Demon. Paper also used as a material for some looks that appear unfinished or broken, even laddered when it comes to knitwear, with the cardigan worn backwards. With 60s haute couture shapes made, however, in dark biker leather all the way to petticoats and sheath dresses, children of 90s minimalism and remnants that remind of airplane drags.

«This collection, more than past ones, encompasses different points of view», Raf Simons himself continued. «In a way it mirrors cinema, because it bears witness to fragments of a larger whole, in which different works move within a single body among various stylistic codes. We were enthralled by the sense of fragility, wrong gestures and the sphere of rawness. Each garment carries with it reflections of life and has its own experience». They are suggestions, like those looks made sharp by exaggerated false eyelashes as the only (visible) trace of make-up left. Sensuality in a detail.

Judgment. Essential beauty and the beauty of essentialism. With an interesting path of construction that goes in reverse, not from daytime to canonical evening, but backwards from nightwear to show off in daytime. Femininity, from the bare minimum of micro-dresses to light traces of frills, proves to be interesting. And the most essential pieces will become new must-haves, without the need for too much branding. (All rights reserved)