February 23, 2017 |
Remember the beds at Prada’s AW17 menswear show? Those leather, wipe-down jobbies? Well, they were back. Sort of. This time they weren’t leather, but made up in girly, floral fabrics or fluffy puffs of pink or yellow fur. A bit like a teenage girl’s bedroom. Or how I would imagine one to be. I haven’t been a teenage girl. And, being a 28-year-old man, I haven’t spent much time in said bedrooms. But there was something about those movie posters, photobooth pictures, scraps torn from magazines. So was this a collection inspired by a girl in the bloom of womanhood? Perhaps. But first, let’s talk about those opening looks. Which are a message from Miuccia herself to begin working on your stomach regions now. Because, for AW17, they will be revealed. And revealed in a crotchet bra, no less. And does crotchet not suggest the era of the 1970s? There was definitely something of the era here – the corduroy suiting, the felted jumpers with naive patterns, those slouchy, sort of baker boy hats. Was Barbara Streisand on the moodboard? But it wasn’t straightforward pastiche – more a kind of collage of Prada-isms – the beading that made the dressers almost flapper-like, the puffs of marabou (and the full on marabou hood moment – we’re dead) that kind of play on bad taste. Garth thought it was a bit sexy. Not that Garth wouldn’t find a plain white t-shirt sexy, if it was made by Miuccia. But here, he’s right – the fishtail skirts, the “major slits” that rode up the front of dresses, the almost perverse gloves. “Something sexy, put with something not sexy,” he says. And when it comes to Prada, Mr Spencer is our opus. So listen to him. Much to still dissect, but a moment. It’s always a moment. God bless Miuccia.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
