Workwear and uniforms have always been great fashion inspirations and they returned in Prada's A/W 23 collection, entitled "Taking Care" and showcased on Thursday during Milan Fashion Week.
That's actually not a surprise considering that Miuccia Prada has always been partial to uniforms, a staple of the Italian fashion house that often appeared on the runway season after season. Yet, one of the main inspirations for the new collection didn't come from uniforms but from those who wear them.
Nurses inspired the opening looks with white skirts that went through a Haute Couture treatment: mini, pencil and full skirts, featured embellishments similar to crocheted doilies, origami-like flowers (also used on exaggeratedly pointy ballet flats with folded bows), three-dimensional elements, stems and petals.
Simons indicated the designs were almost as richly decorated as wedding dresses (intended also as another uniform), but the skirts were matched with simple crewneck sweaters in grey and navy blue for a functional touch.
Military uniforms provided instead ideas for shirtdresses and shirts with front pockets and ties and architectural epaulets that looked like minimalist bows folded on themselves.
The shirts were matched with functional high waisted, skinny pants, with creases in front, but the military side of the collection also saw the return of the parkas and navy duffel coats going from extra-long to cropped seen on the men's A/W 23 runway.
Another link with the men's collection was represented by the shirtless blazers with detachable pointy collars and the collarless cropped spherical bomber jacket that looked like a pillow, matched with a duvet-like skirt that also came in its micro version.
The camel and navy blue capes offered a further connection with the military, but also with nursing personnel, providing a Second World War era reference.
The collection closed with elongated starch and crisp nurse-white shirtdresses and medical scrubs (another staple on Prada’s runways) cut close to the body. Some of them featured epaulets, pockets and logos; all of them incorporated a train to elevate a nurse's traditional wardrobe.
Among the most memorable nurses in the history of fashion, there are Marc Jacobs' reinterpretation of Richard Prince's paintings of nurses in Louis Vuitton S/S 2008 collection, but those ones had a disquieting vibe about them.
The nurses' uniforms on Prada's runway with their clean and minimalist lines and rigorous details were more reminiscent of Pierre Cardin's colourful nurses uniforms from 1970 with a minor yet relevant difference: Cardin tried to imagine nurses' uniforms in the future (the long tunic-like uniforms provided a connection with this collection; other designs he came up with were simply not appropriate for the job; as the New York Times wrote in 1970: "One thing most nurses and administrators agree on is that Pierre Cardin's controversial new nurse's uniform.. .a short white loin cloth...with a breast baring top...will not be a big hit"). Prada is adding couture details or reinventing a nurse's uniforms for a luxury buyer.
Which takes us to what co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons stated about this collection: by adding couture details to utilitarian clothes, they wanted to pay respect to working people, giving importance to real jobs. Focused on reality, as highlighted also when interviewed about the men's A/W 23 collection, Prada reiterated she cared about modest jobs.
It's impossible to disagree with this vision, this intention of paying respect to real people through the beauty of simple garments that represent the uniforms of workers.
But here's exactly where the problem of this collection lies: Prada and Simons talked to the press about valueing "modest jobs, simple jobs, and not only extreme beauty or glamour".
In the somber first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, many fashion commentators found it appropriate and that surely is. Yet, there is at the same time something deeply unnerving and rather annoying when a designer tells you they are creating a wardrobe for "real people", yet the real people they mention are the same people who would get snubbed by the house's PR officers at the doors of a fashion show.
They are the same people they would laugh at in the street for wearing unstylish clothes; they are the same people who do not get into their boutiques not only because the shop assistants would look at them with contempt and disregard, but, first and foremost, because they can't afford anything they sell.
The categories allegedly represented on the runway, especially nurses, simply do not make enough money to get the freedom of choice to buy an original Prada design. Sure, you can save towards it, put it on your credit card and break the bank, but this will mean sacrifices towards bills, food and other general expenses (and that's just if you're single, because, if you have children, things get even more complicated…).
So, you look at the collection, read the feedback from Prada and Simons and there is just one thing that comes to your mind: Jarvis Cocker singing "Common People".
Pulp's 1996 hit about an entitled young woman studying sculpture at London's Central St. Martins, wishing to live "like common people", but knowing deep down that her father could rescue her any time out of poverty and dire conditions, seems to summarise pretty well the mood of this collection.
The protagonist of the song takes her to the supermarket and urges her to pretend she hasn't got any money; maybe we should take Prada, Simons and any other designer working for a luxury house thinking they are creating for "real people" with "real jobs" to a supermarket, a food bank, an Accident & Emergency, a hospital, a care facility or to any other ordinary location populated by real people to see what's real life is about.
So, let them believe they created a collection for "real people", even when their real people are probably K-pop stars, the influencers they feed and dress up and the celebrities who live and thrive on the red carpet, people who would use the designs in the collection to do a haute couture nurse cosplay (well, it goes well with the poverty chic trend for people who don't live in poverty or the distressed luxury style for the fakely disenfranchised).
Prada and Simons may value ordinary people, but their press office maybe didn't read the memo as the humanity occupying the front row didn't belong to the workers celebrated in the collection.
There wasn't certainly a single ordinary person or a nurse among Chinese singer-songwriter Cai Xukun, South Korean pop star Jeon Somi, pop star Dua Lipa, actress Claire Foy and social media personality Charli D'Amelio.
Sure, it is not to the duty of fashion designers to solve the complex social and financial issues of out modern world, but producing a collection that is allegedly designed for real people but that real people can't buy, is a bit like the proverbial "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" ("Let them eat cake").
In conclusion, Prada and Simons may not have the frivolous disregard for the starving peasants or the poor of a heartless aristocratic queen (after all, in 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, after receiving a request from the Tuscany region, Prada started producing sanitary masks and medical overalls for health-care personnel in Montone and the company donated six intensive care units to Milan's Vittore Buzzi, Sacco and San Raffaele hospitals), but, after a collection is presented, any well-meaning tribute fades away and we all go back to our tasks - nurses to their hard jobs, designers in their ivory towers dreaming of common people and whoever is sitting in the front row posing for the photographers.
Comments