Raf Simons

Genderless Uniform. Raf Simons SS22

| Design & Culture by Ed

At a first glance, this might have been an unexpectional (which would be an anomaly) Raf Simons collection – a bunch of black and white outfits. But when you look deeper into it, you see what’s so extraordinary about it. Over the last years, genderless dressing has been so prevalent in fashion that it’s almost lost its meaning. We’re so used to seeing boys in dresses that nothing surprises us. In that sense, Raf Simons’s men and women in corporate skirt-suits didn’t send disbelief down the runway at the Bourse de Commerce. But once you actually tried to picture that image unfolding in the real world it was another matter altogether. Simons has always challenged our relationships with conventional dress codes. This collection was his timely reminder that our collective mentality perhaps isn’t quite as far ahead as we’d like to believe. But it was also a compelling study of how those business dress codes could evolve in a real – if still not super near – future. “Right now, I think it’s an important thing because so many men are buying womenswear anyway,” Simons said after the show. “The question is if they’re buying clothes that are made for women, or clothes that are made for both men and women. It’s something I find fascinating to focus on.” Trying to determine the nature of a genderless garment, his research brought him back to where it all begins. “At the birth of a baby, nobody is approaching it like male or female. It’s just a baby. I wanted to work out a shape that works for both in the same way, even if your perception of the girl or the boy dressed in it is different.” Along the way, his silhouette and styling generated a wealth of overtones, illustrating how associative the image of men in skirts and dresses still is to the contemporary eye. Some of the looks had a clinical sensibility about them, which evoked hospital gowns. Some were almost tribal in their uniformity; and others looked ceremonial – religious, even – a fact only intensified by the skeletal hands that clenched the models’ biceps. Simons, who carried the arm rings over from last season, said he considers them a brand symbol, “like Martin has the Tabi boot.” In the context of his dress code rebels, it felt more like the ghosts of tradition trying to cling on to those preordained gender norms tooth and nail. “Maybe it’s autobiographical, I don’t know,” Simons reflected. “I went to a high school that was almost monastic in a way. You were supposed to be this, you were supposed to be that, you couldn’t dress like this, you had to dress like that… It made me think a lot,” he said. This collection was rebellious, but there was also a distinctly Prada-centric character to the clothes and the styling, which made you wonder if the esotericism that permeates the halls of Simons’s other job in Milan hasn’t amplified his susceptibility to ideas of uniformity. “I think it looks more like a uniform on a boy, and more couture on a girl,” he said of his new silhouette. “It’s a very pure, timeless shape.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

L’Amant Double. Prada SS22

| Design & Culture by Ed

The Prada spring-summer 2022 show was the first chance to see Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’ work on an IRL catwalk. Their collaboration began just as the pandemic descended, and with only videos to tell the story, it could feel at times like the project was in its beta phase. Eighteen months later, with vaccines reopening the world, the brand staged two simultaneous shows, one at home in Milan and the other at Shanghai’s Bund One. At the Fondazione Prada, large LED screens were placed around the runway, and via the live feeds we could see different models striding by in the same looks. As Simons put it, it’s about connecting the world. Clothes-wise, I’ve never been so on fence with a Prada line-up, but I guess if a collection this season makes you question things, then it does the work. Collectively, people on the streets and people inside the fashion industry are embracing sexiness. There’s a diversity of opinion about what’s sexy, but generally speaking, clothes have gotten tighter, smaller, and more see-through as we begin emerging from this COVID-19 crisis. The young generations display a new kind of body positivity that can be frankly startling for older types who didn’t grow up as free. Ultimately, though, their boldness is heartening. “Seduction, Stripped Down” is the name Prada and Simons gave to the collection. In her notes, Prada said, “We thought of words like elegant – but this feels so old-fashioned. Really, it’s about a language of seduction that always leads back to the body. Using these ideas, these references to historical pieces, the collection is an investigation of what they mean today.” The historical ideas in question are the familiar tropes of womanhood, like bra cups and corsetry boning, made unconventional by how they were presented: on simple, even plain, sweaters or as details on denim coats. Duchesse satin sheaths read as almost demure until the dresses turned to reveal they were unbuttoned to the lower back, exposing peekaboo flashes of lingerie. The long evening column also got a rethink; it was sliced above the knee, but a bow in back extended to the floor. “That feels modern,” Simons stated. The hard/soft interplay of raw or distressed leather jackets and tiny duchesse satin miniskirts trailing trains counted as the collection’s most talked about details. Well, I can’t stand those trains, and I feel like they’ve polarized the entire industry. It’s not easy to redefine sexy, as we’ve seen elsewhere this week. Does this word even mean anything in fashion today? Miuccia and Raf did “sexy” in the Prada-ist “ugly chic” manner, balancing cumbersome and sleek, lace with leather, the wrapped and the untied.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – An Innocence. Prada SS22

| Design & Culture by Ed

For the first time, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons let some warmth and a sense of spontainety to their creative dialogue. The Prada man for spring-summer 2022 appears to be a slightly naive beach-boy, who wears his yellow windcheater (nothing underneath) and matching bucket-hat all day long. Which I instantly love, of course. As co-creative director Miuccia observed in a quote released shortly before the collection video: “A sense of the utopian, the ideal, of hope, positivity. To expose yourself to nature, to go to the beach – it’s freedom. It is utopian. That is really a primary need – an intellectual need, too.” This translated into a skin-heavy rendering of a reemergence that was tantamount to a rebirth. The film opened with the models negotiating a “meandering red tunnel”, ready for the world ahead, but not yet in it. Very directly we were presented with some of the key motifs of what looked like a commercially strong Prada suite: bucket hats with almond-shaped brims at the back (a bit British policeman’s helmet) with triangular logo pockets, and some with the awesome functionality of slits at the front to allow sunglasses to be slipped in them. Romper suits with turned-up short hems were presented in corporate-worker charcoal cotton or sailor-boy white, the latter printed with tattoo-ish nautical motifs including octopi, voluptuous mermaid/sirens, anchors and anchor fish. Around two minutes into the film, Prada’s boys finally hit the beach. The scenes were filmed at the south-eastern point of Sardinia, on the coast of Capo Carbonara, an area where the house is funding the reforestation of marine ecosystems. By coincidence, it is also where I’m booked to spend my summer holiday. It was in this setting that the presentation changed from formulaic runway walk into something more apparently spontaneous and free, in order to evoke an essence described by Raf Simons in his pre-show quote portfolio: “The primary feeling is one of joy. It’s almost like that memory of a child, the joy of a child going to the beach. The simplest and most honest of pleasures. In all its simpleness, it’s also something very meaningful and timeless.” Beach-ready were the floral-shorn terry hoodies, the skorts of course, the beautiful bucket bags in cracked leather and rowing stripe cotton drill, and those awesome hats. Away from the water, highlights included a biker jacket in yolk-yellow or show-set-red which felt like an unusual template here; double-waisted pants made to be worn loosely and tantalisingly adrift at the front; plenty of tailoring with (again) rolled up sleeves; and multiple full-look-izations of the skorts via teaming them with matching tank-tops. These looks seemed like summer iterations of the last-show long johns. “This collection and this show is very much about capturing that, the joy of the everyday. The notion that living your life can be a euphoric experience. Much joy can come out of something so simple: when times are complicated, we are searching for simple, direct joys. An innocence“, concluded Prada.

“Live” collage by Edward Kanarecki.