In an era when the world teeters on multiple precipices, trust Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons to pose a provocative question: Are we perhaps being too cautious? Their Fall/Winter 2025 menswear collection for Prada, presented Sunday in Milan, seemed to suggest that our collective penchant for playing it safe might be precisely what needs disrupting.
“The world is becoming too conservative,”Ms. Prada declared backstage, her words hanging in the air with characteristic weight. “Everybody asks designers to be revolutionary, but what is happening in the world is not so revolutionary.”
The show’s setting itself was a meditation on controlled precariousness: a multi-tiered scaffolding structure inside the Prada Deposito that forced viewers to contemplate both construction and destruction. Those seated at ground level, watching models traverse the elevated runways above, couldn’t shake the delicious tension between the structure’s mathematical precision and its suggestion of imminent collapse.
This interplay between calculation and chaos manifested throughout the collection. Razor-sharp tailoring and slim silhouettes spoke to our desire for control, while dramatically proportioned cowboy boots – accompanying nearly every look – suggested a kind of desperate improvisation as if one had dressed hastily for an approaching storm. Mr. Simons termed this approach “savage” and “instinctive,” suggesting that beauty can emerge from unlikely combinations.
The collection’s exploration of primal instincts versus domestic comfort yielded some of its most compelling moments. Fur-lined puffer jackets offered protective cocoons, while pyjama ensembles spoke to our collective yearning for domestic refuge. Yet these familiar comforts were consistently subverted – proportions pushed to extremes, unexpected materials introduced, conventional wisdom challenged at every turn.
Rather than rely on specific references, the designers created what they called “a radical mix”: bourgeois cowboys collided with sensual eveningwear, while child-like prints stood in stark contrast to brutalist shapes. The result was neither post-apocalyptic nor precious, but rather a clear-eyed assessment of how one might dress for uncertain times while refusing to surrender joy.
“You have to be optimistic by definition and in principle,” Ms. Prada insisted. In less capable hands, such a statement might ring hollow. But this collection – with its sophisticated tension between preparation and abandon, protection and pleasure – made a compelling case for facing our precarious present not with fear, but with calculated daring.
As the last model descended from the scaffolding, one couldn’t help but feel that Prada had once again captured the zeitgeist, not by reflecting our anxieties back to us, but by suggesting a way through them: with intelligence, instinct, and just the right amount of savage grace.
