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2025/06/29 Features

Soft terrain, summer reveries: Prada SS26 Menswear Runway

A return to simplicity, lightness and calmness

What was that space that greeted the Prada audience today? The vast concrete expanse of the Deposito staged by Rem Koolhaas’s AMO, its industrial bones exposed under floods of natural light streaming through windows we'd never noticed before. Flower-shaped carpets bloomed across the floor like naive drawings, their shaggy textures softening the Fondazione into something unexpectedly tender. The ambient soundscape of The KLF replaced the usual techno theme, creating an atmosphere so calm it felt almost ecclesiastical for a Sunday afternoon show.

Then the first model emerged: a crisp white cotton poplin shirt in tandem with micro-short bloomer shorts, as if someone had taken scissors to a summer camp uniform and reassembled it by pure instinct.

Backstage, Miuccia explained the concept is about calmness, disassembling, simplifying, reducing to the essential until only the most honest gestures remained. As the collection unfolded, those utilitarian references multiplied and morphed, drawing from the uniforms that shaped her own wardrobe before she entered fashion design. During her student years—first studying mime in theatre, then earning a PhD in political science—she dressed herself in uniforms sourced from Milanese stores: sailors' gear, postmen's jackets.

In this collection, the boundaries dissolved entirely: sportswear could turn formal, beachwear transported to city streets. Lime green flip-flops paired with leather jackets, millinery as a statement piece over a boatneck sweater. Plimsoll sneakers, those canvas laced-up shoes commonly worn by Jane Birkin, offered the perfect marriage of practical and chic, their understated elegance grounding even the most unexpected combinations. The return to sensorial lightness and compositional freedom.

Raf Simons' influence channeled a gentler vision of youth culture than his eponymous brand's teenage rebellion. Constructed volumes that stayed close to the body without constructing it. "No shape of the waist, shoulder or ankle.. something more human," as he put it, creating silhouettes that moved like water rather than armor.

The week in Milan has been heavy with collections that seem to forget they're dressing for summer. But Prada offered something radical in its simplicity: clothes that breathed. In an age of muchness and overproduction, this felt like a breath of fresh air—a change of tone that whispered, proving that sometimes the most powerful statement is knowing when to stop.

As Prada's own show notes concluded:

Lover’s lake, peak’s end, the last swim.

Imaginary places.

The SS26 show invitation is a leather ring. Photo credit by @Vésma Kontere McQuillan.
More stories from the runway coming your way.

Isabel

Isabel Xu