“They are hand-drawn, human, simple and real. Even if they contain of course all the worst fantasy, they look simple. . . . They are little fragments of life, which is what you get now from the information, the media: So I was more and more attracted by them. Even if I never liked them.” What’s Miuccia Prada talking about this season? Comic books!

The venue of the spring-summer 2018 fashion show was all covered in James Jean’s and Ollie Schrauwen’s graphics and prints, presenting some utopian, subverted reality – a reality, that has always been Prada‘s fantasy. The pieces covered in comics illustrations, like bumbags and knits, will surely end as the season’s most coveted pieces of Prada maniacs. Miuccia associates reading comics with young boys, that’s why the Prada gameboy went for geeky Velcro straps, a collar-up shirt and lots, lots of nylon. Childhood naivety in pure form: the boys are happy with their gaming achievements, while wearing red pants and sandals with socks. But Prada doesn’t want her male customer to infinitely fall into infantilism. Note the voluminous, wool coats. “Everything was a little bit too naive, too simple, so we thought these heavy coats would be the right counterpart. That is just fashion—because we love it.”

One can’t ignore the fact that it was the first men’s Prada collection in a while lacking the women’s looks. As the female part got a separate resort show a month ago at Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, the guests had to focus solely on menswear. Surely, that was the aim of the brand’s management – to some extend, you rather got more ecstatic about those few dresses and gorgeous pumps than the line-up of suits. But showing both men’s and women’s clothes in a show used to be Miuccia’s vision, so…

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.