Milan Fashion Week: Prada projects youthful optimism, not escapism, in a turbulent world

MILAN – Without making overt statements, Milan designers expressed their concern about global turmoil through their collections.

Miuccia Prada said she wanted to project optimism.

“Because even though times are bad, I feel like it was the right thing to do,” she said backstage at the Prada show. She is not promoting escapism. as.”

Not using the platform to comment on the state of the world would be “irresponsible”, said the designers behind the Simon Cracker brand, born 14 years ago to contrast the prevailing fashion system with recycled collections.

They dedicated their collection, titled “A Matter of Principle,” to “children who are victims of matters of principle.”

Some highlights from Sunday’s third day of menswear previews for Spring-Summer 2025:

Prada’s men’s collection plays with the idea of ​​imperfection. But nothing is what it seems.

Tops, jackets and sweatshirts look shrunken, rather than cropped. Overcoats have three-quarter sleeves. It is a wardrobe that is somehow inherited, already lived in. The creases are part of the construction, as technical as a pleat. The pointy collars of the shirts are held together by wires. The pants feature fake belts, low and below the waist. Belts also appear as decoration on bags, as if to close them.

Miuccia Prada, co-creative director of the brand with Raf Simons, said that playing with the idea of ​​real versus fake “is very contemporary,” calling these details “an invitation to take a closer look at the clothes.”

The neutral color palette is punctuated by feminine tones: a bright green cardigan, a floral blouse, a turquoise coat, which the stylists say suggest a mother’s or grandmother’s wardrobe. The pieces can be aligned with inverted triangle cutouts to create layers.

“We wanted (the collection) to already be alive, like the clothes you already live with,” Simons said backstage.

Prada models emerged from a simple white hut, descending to the showroom down a catwalk flanked by a white picket fence. The designers describe the setting as essential and utopian – and young.

“Here, youth is hope, it is the future,” said Prada. “Right now, we thought it was relevant to also encourage young people to think about our world.”

So many knots to undo in the world, so many knots that hold together the latest Simon Cracker collection of mostly recycled clothing.

For spring-summer 2025, designers Filippo Biraghi and Simone Botte put together their collection of repurposed garments using lace and cords to create skirts from panels of tennis shirts, dresses from knitwear and restructured jackets. Each piece is unique.

The “edgy” color palette of black, violet, sea blue and acid green was achieved through dyeing, each material reacting differently to the process.

“It’s a way of telling what’s happening in the world, without being too explicit,” Biraghi said backstage. “It would be irresponsible not to be a politician at this moment.”

The name of the 14-year-old brand is intended to denote that something is broken – cracked – in the fashion system. They embrace imperfection as part of the beauty of their creations, made from forgotten or discarded clothing and deadstock fabrics, this time including fabrics from the Italian Australian sportswear brand.

Australian, which is gaining traction among the club crowd, also created a capsule collection of black neon and technical clothing for Simon Cracker, its first production line. Doc Martens provided the shoes, which the designers personalized with brooches, badges and jewelry.

JW Anderson’s warm-weather collection for men and women wraps the shape in soft, squishy outerwear—a counterintuitive choice in the warming planet. The collection’s apparent motto, on jackets, sweaters and T-shirts, Real Sleep, can be read as a recipe for dealing with the real world.

The humorous collection played “with this idea of ​​miniature scale and maximum scale,” the Northern Irish designer said after the show. It opened with large quilted jackets and transitioned to large skeins of cashmere wool, each in triplicate.

On the miniature side, Anderson recreated Georgian terraced houses and country cottages in front of the grids, with intarsia doors and windows.

Soft hoodies felt structural enough to prevent a fall. Large colorful structures shaped like silk balloons on coats were deflated, as if to say the world is too much. And if so, make yourself comfortable with a smiling pint of Guinness, the Irish stout is presented in a capsule collection with whimsical images from a knitwear advertising campaign from the last century.

Anderson said he was exploring “the idea of ​​permissiveness with clothing. This idea of ​​what we do best is tell stories.”