For fall 2023, many of the Prada runway models came in matching looks, ready for an impromptu game of “spot the difference.” Chinese singer Cai Xukun, Korean actor Song Kang, US actor Hunter Shafer , and more stars at Prada’s fall 2023 runway show this morning during Milan Fashion Week.
Cai Xukun
Hunter Shafer
Song Kang
People think that only glamor is important in fashion, but I hate this view, I have always fought against it – says Miuccia Prada-. The search for beauty everywhere and in any form is the basis of this collection. We were inspired by uniforms that represent care, like those of nurses, because taking care of others is a beautiful thing. We wanted to transform these uniforms from symbols of care to symbols of beauty». Raf Simons adds: «This collection is inspired by the idea of beauty. But every time we deal with a subject, Miuccia and I try to get out of the typical pattern. The idea of beauty that we were attracted to was synonymous with attention, care, and the uniforms that go with these concepts, because people who care about others are the most important. We always come back to people, it’s a matter of responsibility.”
That’s what Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons did, in a Prada show that took the subject of uniforms — the kind that surround us, the kind that are so familiar they often go unseen (not the kind associated with the war in Ukraine, though it has been a year since Russia invaded, and the consequences have affected our closets in ways we don’t always realize) — and lavished them with the sort of detailed attention normally bestowed on couture.
Like duffle coats and parkas. Here in wool, with the back belled out like a cocoon and caught by a seam just at the top of the thighs, hands tucked into neat little pockets high on the ribs, so it changes the posture. Or caretakers’ shirt dresses, rendered as evening wear in crisp white cotton dropped narrowly to the ankles, hitched up on the bias at the hips and fishtailing behind on the floor
Although white skirts were a constant, they too varied substantially: some were crafted of an immobile puffer material while others had flowing trains, some were barren whilst others featured ample embroidery of natural motifs. This imagery—particularly the rosettes—are an updated thread line from Prada’s previous collection and were featured mostly on pointed, geometric shoes with extending wings.
Ultimately, with the fall 2023 collection, Simons and Mrs. Prada aimed to “reconceptualize, reconsider, and ultimately rediscover ideas of beauty”—not in the more literal sense of other fashion houses, as Mrs. Prada built her brand on the “jolie laide” aesthetic of “ugly” beauty, but in that uniquely Prada way, which no other designer has quite been able to mimic.
