Power dressing was in at the FW24 Prada show today in Milan. Structured oversized, blazers were shown alongside fluid sleeveless mid-length smock dresses.
Titled “Instinctive Romance” the collection took inspiration from different historical fashion eras, while firmly being rooted in the present.
In the notes which accompanied the show, design duo Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons explained “Antecedents literally fashion the present. Stereotypical garments of today – biker jackets, bomber jackets, knitwear – are shaped by elements drawn from history, changing line and detail.”
“A knowledge of history not only informs the contemporaneous but defines it – clothes are referent to different eras, other times, synchronous echoes recontextualized. The past is an instrument, a tool for learning, used here to try to invent something new. Yet rather than an intellectual examination, this collection is an emotional reaction, to ideals of beauty that still feel resonant,” the show notes continued.
The house took on a philosophical approach to the history of fashion, describing it as “the intangible traces of human lives made concrete.”
The house went on to describe the act of holding a fashion show as “the initiation of a conversation with the world, an exchange of ideas,” which also connects to a “fundamental human impulse – to touch one another, to express feeling, through the clothes we wear”.
