Prada's rebel space-age at SS25

Soon billionaires will be able to go on vacation in space. For now, the travel package simply includes a trip to the stratosphere, which is relatively close to the Earth's surface, but nothing can stop us from thinking that one day there will be a hotel on Mars. Riding the wave of this new elite trend, creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have thought of a collection that revives the concept of holiday-wear - raffia hats for the beach, nylon bags, and raincoats for boat trips - through a contemporary reinterpretation of the 1960s. Back on the runway are the metallics of Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin, who in those years invented the aesthetic of space-age, in the form of dresses studded with silver eyelets and steel-tipped shoes, giant sunglasses, and colorful leggings, which according to Prada, are to be worn without skirts. The collection, which was presented a few hours ago at the Prada Foundation on an aqua-green carpet, was very colorful, including fewer looks than the brand's average show but each outfit was full of details. Among the models, there were no ambassadors, no brand clients like in the case of the FW24: Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, pioneers of functional design, asked the audience to look at the clothes. Only the clothes. “It is a tribute to individuality”, proclaims the preface to the show.

The first look offered the audience the brand's more humorous side, with a yellow floral dress that had gatherings and stiffened bows, as if it had just come out of the dryer. Soon after, the mood became more serious with gray wool bombers and yellow satin evening dresses. The brand's playfulness returned subtly in the form of printed fur on the shoulders of jackets, fake belts painted on the waists of pants, and bright green heels distorted like a leaf blown by the wind. The indecipherable quantity of different styles and combinations present in Prada's new collection seems to be issuing a challenge to the simplicity of contemporary style, now reducible to nicknames designed to please the internet's algorithm. In a sea of color, ranging from banana yellow to pea green, purple to orange, it was almost impossible to focus on each look in its entirety. You had to stop and look at the metal sunglasses, the trapezoid bags, the transparent dress worn over a tight bodysuit, or the lace-up platforms with striped soles that recalled Prada's 2010 collections.

Among the most interesting accessories in the new collection, we find a harness-belt that clings to pencil skirts with metal closures, a pair of orange cowboy boots, shiny and waterproof, and a new maxi yellow leather bag. Amid the abundance of new items presented by Prada this season, we see the return of bows, this time large and soft, worn around the neck like Sailor Moon, bucket bags, and then tops and minidresses made with countless shimmering floral appliqués. The shoes, each different from the other, were a show in themselves: in addition to the leaf-heels, waterproof cowboy boots, 2010 platforms, and classic mary janes, a sneaker-kitten-heel hybrid with sporty laces and a purple suede upper also debuted on the runway, the literal personification of the ugly chic launched by Prada herself thirty years ago.

The SS25 was an exercise in style for the two creative directors, a new opportunity to show the fashion industry's audience that being fashionable might also mean copying a look from the runway, but that to be innovative, one must know how to question what is fed to us daily, from the For You Page to Fashion Week. In short, Prada and Simons are asking why, with all the clothes and fashion we have today, we should settle for following a trend hastily learned on TikTok. Going back to the billionaire vacations: “Why reach for the stars when there are footprints on the moon?”