Some runway shows go down in history for their conceptual themes, for amazing showpieces or for great art and architecture connections. Prada's A/W 2023 menswear collection will instead be remembered as the one in which they invited K-pop band Enhypen.
In case you missed it, you can watch the show on YouTube on Prada's official channel, but, you're warned, there's only 13 minutes of clothes, the rest focuses on guests arriving and on the seven members of South Korean boy band Enhypen, causing the same levels of hysteria of The Beatles circa 1964 among the teens gathered outside.
The collection was entitled "Let's Talk About Clothes", but, judging from the comments on social media, not many were paying attention to the actual designs on the runway. Most comments just stated, "Thank you for inviting Enhypen".
So let's try to look at the actual clothes: co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons played it safe highlighting in quotes provided to the media that they aimed at offering something useful for people to face the challenges, problems and difficulties of real life.
Which in a nutshell means to provide designs that, by being more basic, may last longer trend-wise and represent therefore for consumers an investment for more than just 3 months (at the same time, this emphasis on "useful" garments was maybe a bit controversial: after all, should fashion always be useful? Aren't we allowed to desire something that we do not need, but that we simply want because we like it and we think it is beautiful?)
A return to useful pieces meant an exploration of archetypal designs from the men's wardrobe. The show started with two/three-buttoned (but also single-breasted) charcoal suits sported with detachable pointy collars in pastel shades (leftovers from Prada's A/W 2015 pastel collection?) on bare skin. Maybe the collar was a development of Prada's S/S 22 menswear rib-knit cardigan bibs that brought to mind the video call looks of lockdown times.
There were also other items that called to mind other lockdown amenities such as duvet dresses and pillow challenges (well, the show invitation was a Prada pillow with a pillowcase in a variety of trademark prints, so there you go…), namely a padded vest, a spherical jacket and a collarless MA-1 bomber jacket that looked like pillows (more specifically like the pillow used for the invitation...). There were also echoes in these designs of Martin Margiela's A/W 1999-2000 duvet coat.
The collection was strong on outerwear with navy duffel coats going from extra-long to cropped; variations on suits were represented by squarish jackets and coats with graphic taping motifs along the sleeves, for that retro-futuristic touch à la "Decima vittima" with just a hint of Roberta di Camerino.
Workers' uniforms were reinvented and aprons transformed into dresses (but if you're into this look you can redo it at a fraction of the price by getting more inventive with vintage denim or leather aprons…).
There was something else that went through a transformation – the show space of the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada.
Conceived by AMO, it looked like a claustrophobic low ceiling garage, but, when the show started, the plasterboard ceiling rose, revealing Art Deco chandeliers (this new configuration ended up creating a space reminiscent of Angelo Mangiarotti's Splūgen Brau Depot View this photo). "This process echoes the garments themselves, elongated or abbreviated. They demonstrate a reconstruction of meaning, of identity, activated through a minimal gesture," the show notes stated.
Art Deco was a celebration of the machine age and the rigid totes that seemed made by ripping cast-steel industrial flooring (a reference to the flooring of multiple Prada shows, including the A/W 2015 show) and contained water bottles, were maybe a reference to the mechanical age (from some angles and with the bottle top protruding from the tote, the models looked as if they were carrying a gasoline tank, which is definitely a luxury given the current prices of gasoline in Italy…).
As a whole the collection wasn’t extremely innovative or new, but there was a stroke of genius in this show - inviting Enhypen. At the end of the show the members of the band popped in the backstage to say "Annyeonghaseyo" (hello) and presented Prada and Simons with gifts purchased at 10 Corso Como. Damn it, you can't even hate them for being good-looking, because they're too polite. In fact, you gotta love them: they were a great distraction, attracted screaming crowds of teens and even brought presents. Let's talk about clothes? Well, who cares to do so when you have K-pop icons in the front row?
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