MILAN (AP) — The Prada model grips her full, pleated skirt, forming a rosette at the unfinished waist in a gesture that evokes feminine beauty with a subversive twist.
Co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons kept the focus of their Spring Summer 2027 collection firmly “waist down," in reference to a two-decade-old traveling Prada exhibition that examined the role in contemporary wardrobes of one of mankind's oldest garments.
Recasting an ancient form for modern times
For practicality and creativity, nothing surpasses the skirt, according to Prada, who favors skirts in her own wardrobe, including a pink silk one she wore for a backstage preview before the runway show that opened Milan Fashion Week on Tuesday.
“If you want to have a normal life, go wherever you want. It’s easy to camouflage even a beautiful skirt,’’ she said. “You need to camouflage the beauty so that you can live with people.”
The creative directors’ decision to keep trousers and dresses out of this collection was inspired by an old video interview of Prada likening the skirt to a T-shirt for men, in which she said “the place where she can put all her ideas,” Simons said.
From the swath of material that ancient man wrapped around the waist, Prada used a rectangular piece of material as the collection’s starting point, which Prada said became the framework for creativity.
Using the skirt as a creative canvas
Flipping runway convention that often focuses on the female bodice, black tops in varying styles offered a blank canvas against which to admire the first cluster of skirts: Slit numbers closed with industrial velcro to allow adjustable slits, feminine pleats, short satiny numbers in naïve prints and sheer crinoline overlays on crumpled silken skirts with flattened ruffles.
Bralettes, bandeaus and bustiers, tiny as they were, offered another forum for expression, including scoop-neck bralettes, bandeaus that link to arm bands and bustiers worn unhooked over homely knitwear.
Footwear ranged from silken slingbacks to industrial perforated leather pumps.
The collection didn’t propose full looks as much as it offered building blocks for self-expression.
“I think you can express complexity,” Prada said. “Everything is so complex, how can you be just one thing? When you express yourself, it is not that you are feminine, sexy, masculine, you are so many things together."
