Everything
It’s takes a twisted sense of humour to produce a collection directly referencing return to work aesthetics exactly at a time when most people are, indeed, returning to work and most likely regretting it but that enduring irony is something that Prada prides itself on.
Their Fall Winter 2024 collection, held at the house’s HQ Fondazione Prada in Milan, didn’t hold back either. Swivel chairs lined the runway, there were replica work cubicles and screensavers (a nod, perhaps, to the first prototype for prada.com created by OMA/AMO back in 2000 and wonderfully called Prada Vomit? I can hope) but underneath it all, a makeshift river with running water and meadow.
A double-edged metaphor with different implications, depending on how you look at it. First, a forced reminder of just how much time we spend in un-natural spaces. There’s nothing organic about an office, where many of spend most of our working hours while craving the restorative gifts of fresh air, sunshine and greenery. Secondly, Prada is continually undergoing a series of self-analyses, reevaluating and reconfiguring the house codes to create its own internal ecosystem that is, season after season, excavated, reconstructed, deconstructed and renewed.
In the context of the natural environment just out of reach below the very un-natural space of the office runway, Miuccia Prada and co-creative director Raf Simons were making a point: despite its restrictive reputation, the definition of the uniform is actually malleable and adaptive. The uniform of a gardener versus the white collar office worker versus the uniform of a swimmer (the signature Prada swimming cap worn here in lieu of a winter beanie).
The manner in which these diverse uniforms were styled was perhaps the biggest giveaway. Said swimming caps teamed with tweed suiting worn alongside leather sandals were satisfyingly incongruous while the colour clashes continued on from previous collections. Luminous and translucent soles on the bottom of derbies were a nice Simons flashback.
Perhaps one thing to note. For those of us old enough to remember The Belt era of Y2K, its presence on the waist’s of models for a 2024 collection might be triggering.
