PRADA FALL/WINTER 2021 MENSWEAR SHOW POSSIBLE FEELINGS

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The Prada Fall/Winter 2021 Menswear collection by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons takes as its basis an intimate and personal wish for contact, our urge to exchange and relate. The foundation of all is the individual: the human body, and its freedom.

The need to feel, the pleasure of tactility, results in a panoply of surface texture and textile. Echoing the notion of sensory stimulation, geometric-patterned jacquard knits and leathers are combined with re-nylon, bouclé tweeds and classic pinstripe wool suiting, in both traditional and unanticipated colors. The interplay is projected outwards, to the sequence of rooms the models navigate through the show. Each excites the senses: backdrops brilliantly-hued, the models’ isolated passages underscored by an original electronic soundtrack by Plastikman aka Richie Hawtin. Devised by Rem Koolhaas and AMO, the show’s ‘non-spaces’ are defined by panes of marble, resin, plaster and faux fur. Inviting and seductive, they can pretend to be both interior and exterior, hard and soft, warm and cold: simultaneously both and neither, they allow absolute freedom of interpretation and expression.

A similar doublespeak is reflected in the depiction of the body itself - via clothes reduced, minimalized in structure. The logical conclusion is to return to the body: jacquard-knit bodysuits create a streamlined “second skin”, serving to delineate the figure in dynamic movement. Abstraction of feeling becomes abstraction of freedom. These bodysuits paradoxically reveal while concealing, placing an emphasis on physicality, but also covering the form. Some are proposed alone: in other outfits, they are used to create a base layer under tailoring and outerwear. They denote both protection and exposure, with synchronous connotations of the naive and knowing, intimate and removed, youthful and mature. In the latter, they reflect a passage of time, of life.

To opposite ends, emphasizing the body through a process of reduction results in silhouettes that stand away from the frame, a reduction of shape in the garment. Single and double-breasted coats are constructed on rectilinear lines; bomber jackets are generous. Executed in leather and bouclé, lined in geometric jacquards, garments are sensual - crafting a topography of feeling, enjoyed by the wearer alone. Color and pattern excites the eye; surfaces entice touch.

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QUOTES BY MIUCCIA PRADA
‘We spoke about experimenting, and freedom - possibilities of colour, possibilities of surfaces, of feeling. The collection is about feelings and sensibilities. In this moment, we miss tactility, we miss touch. There is a comforting feeling, of humanity and the senses - the clothes reflect that. There is a very intimate side to the clothes, of the naked body, almost. It’s about this human need of sensuality. Abstract, but a very true, real need for something physical, the need for touch. The sensuality of the body, and the structure of the clothes.’

QUOTES BY RAF SIMONS
‘Tactility was something very much on our minds - and tactility lead to physicality, to the tangible and real. The collection is physical - the clothes hold the body and invite the touch, which has a deep resonance in a moment when everything is so digital, so ephemeral. The silhouette focuses on the physique, on the form, and there is a physical freedom, the body is liberated. It is protected also: protection is important, it talks about our time, our reality. Protection comforts, also - a new way, a different way of comforting, but one that is powerful.’