January 19, 2015 |
Gender. Perhaps, thanks to the rise of feminism and LGBT activism, this decade’s big buzzword. It was also something that Miuccia Prada chose, for not unrelated reasons, to explore in her autumn/winter 2015 collection for Prada; “[the] way men and women can or would dress? The way they represent themselves,” according to the show notes. This was, subsequently, not a menswear show but a “men’s and women’s show”, 29 looks were men’s, 20 were women’s. A reflection, perhaps, of Miuccia’s rejection of a binary, black-and-white way of presenting fashion, or even fashion itself, in terms of gender. But this wasn’t about gender-bending – guys in skirts and girls in boyfriend jeans, clothes for guys and girls were different, all or nearly all black, grey and navy blue, but different. The guys had fringes that looked like they had been cut with a blunt pair of scissors, the girls had sixties bouffant hair. Both sexes carried an oxymoronic sense of World War II austerity, in terms of the colour palette, and of nineties luxury, in the shiny and silky smooth black nylon. And though the use of black was profuse, the result was not dark, gothic or even sombre. It was instead, as Miuccia herself described, “Uniform, severe, elegant.” Or, as we thought, wearable, profoundly desirable and profoundly Prada.
Photographer: Jason Lloyd-Evans
By Ted Stansfield
