Quite often while analysing a Prada collection, you find yourself hit by a fresh sense of déjà vu and you instantly start wondering where you saw those shades or clothes: was it in a fashion history book, at a rare vintage boutique, in a contemporary art gallery or maybe on the screen of an arthouse cinema?
These are actually all plausible places for Miuccia Prada's inspirations, though cinema is definitely one of the strongest, with Michelangelo Antonioni remaining one of her favourite directors.
In Prada's Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection and Resort 2016 collection showcased yesterday afternoon during Milan Menswear Week there were actually no tangible references to films, but there seemed to be a sort of subtle link with Antonioni's first colour film, Deserto rosso (Red Desert, 1964).
The connection wasn't with the main character, Giuliana (Monica Vitti), a young mother recovering from a nervous breakdown, but with the film neurotic palette that Antonioni appropriated from modern paintings (that "painted anxiety" he would visualise in Mark Rothko's works...) and with wider themes such as isolation, alienation and characters immersed in an almost alien post-industrial background, a no man's land made in the case of Prada's runway of curved and soft or sharp and straight slabs of clear plastic (that many guests tweeted about before the event started).
Miuccia Prada claimed her main point with this collection was giving a more human dimension to fashion in our current society in which it pays to be aggressively bold.
Leaving being the post-modernist moniker, Miuccia stated she was therefore going for the "post-modest, post-industrialist and post-Pop" (well, if with post-Pop she intends Pop as seen on the Moschino runway, that can only be welcomed...).
For menswear she therefore focused on tailoring, with unlined light coats or sporty jackets matched with leg-baring leather shorts with contrast stitching and partially tucked in shirts.
Breton stripes then introduced another theme in the collection: childish knits with rather superficial infographic-like symbols (or logos?) of rabbits, rockets and race cars ("Castello Cavalcanti" anybody?).
As insecure as the anti-heroes in a Wes Anderson film, they recounted a story of a prolonged infantile boyhood in rather boring shades of navy, grey, red, safety orange and mustard.
The narrative changed with womenswear, though: the same motifs reappeared here and there, but, they were integrated in pleated skirts with glossy snakeskin inserts, reinvented on tabard-like dresses in rigid plasticky panels that echoed the '60s and Courreges, or pointed at carefree icons à la Edie Sedgwick. These garments were also alternated on the runway with skirts covered in oversized grommets (the latter are another trend for next year, see also Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection) and sequinned coats that added an aura of extravagance and perversion to the collection.
Eyeballs on dresses and bags introduced a new theme, though eyeballs, a favourite Fornasetti symbol, have been fashionable now for quite a few seasons with many brands such as Kenzo that commercially exploited the motif in a successful way in its A/W 2013 collection (View this photo).
Definitely less subdued and modest than the men's looks, these styles relocated women on top, re-shifting the balance of the Autumn/Winter 2015-16 menswear and Pre-Fall 2015 collections during which Prada created a genderless uniform designed to erase differences.
Yet there are differences: net profits at Prada suffered a 28.2% slump in the 12 months to 31 January, something to do with a change in the buying habits of Asian consumers, with many luxury consumers shifting their allegiance towards less known and more understated brands. Since men's fashion is growing and expanding, the Prada company announced last year its will to focus more on menswear.
Ever contrary, Miuccia seems to be doing so by putting women on top, and foregrounding female subjectivity, like in Antonioni's films where a woman often took centre stage. The Resort collection didn't add any innovative elements to Prada's own semantics, but certainly offered to fans a range of accessories to lust after, from large round sequinned earrings to perforated bags and clutches covered in eye prints, from flat dynamic shoes to sandals with a chain anchored to the toe. Compared to it, the menswear collection ended up looking infinitely more vapid, less desirable and void of originality. But is that maybe its strength?
It is said that upon visiting the New York studio of the painter Rothko, Antonioni stated: "Your paintings are like my films - they’re about nothing… with precision". You get the feeling that, if he were still alive, Antonioni would say the same thing about Prada's collections: you can torture yourself and try to see a lot of things in them, but quite often they are about "nothing...with precision".
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