September 22, 2016 |
“Women. I decided that they want to take care of now and the present and do something much more simple. Trying to find a new elegance. elegance sounds like an old fashioned word… there is the sense of something new. Women in this moment, the personal, the intimate, the real. And so I tried to make it in a way that is contemporary… Searching for this kind of simpleness and elegance but of today,” Miuccia Prada told me backstage after the Prada SS17 show. The Prada revolution. This time the Pradasphere was darker. It was radical, illogical and syncopated with the glamour of functionality. Miuccia Prada’s happy discord. Mrs Prada’s women were lightly controlled in a world of uncertainty. A repressed glamour. Soft marabou feathers oscillated in this sound time tunnel as their Prada chunky sandals and elegant heels hit the Perspex that rattled cages below. It became louder and louder, their march to freedom. Or was it? A collaboration with David O’Russell featured a film “Past Forward” played out of sync on screens as the girls marched. It altered our world, repetitive small movements and we were somehow transported into a Prada infused trance of anxiety as a soft technicolor world of hope walked by. Checkered bomber jackets, frothy bras and high waisted hot pants, kind of ‘On the Waterfront,’ this was the revolution. The classic Prada prints that are oddly ’70s were the lynchpin for the collection and the women wore medallions, badges of honour. Everything was ever so slightly off kilter, gently asymmetric. There was a sense of fearfulness. “Fear of what comes in life,” Mrs Prada told us. “The fear is a friend, an enemy… Emotion, love.” And so much comes from this battle. Prada won this one.
Photograph by Jason Lloyd-Evans
