Following his appointment as co-creative director last April, Raf Simons joins Miuccia Prada in evolving Prada, the long-established Milan-based fashion house.
Their debut collection was created during the pandemic, of which social distancing, travel restrictions and other lifestyle changes affected the design process.
Nevertheless, a dialogue of different viewpoints between the two leading designers became a creative conversation that resulted in the Prada Donna spring/summer 2021 collection.
Due to the global health crisis, the mediation between technology and humanity has brought people together. On a deeper level, technology's indispensable presence has led to a different dialogue between ourselves and information: today, technology is a part of humanity itself.
The two co-creative directors drew inspiration from this inherently contemporary and inevitable fusion in designing the spring/summer 2021 collection.
They explored and touched on multiple interpretations of the notion of uniform: a uniform of Prada, of a community, a visual representation of identity, of shared and embraced values, a way of thinking.
Designs are pared-back, without superfluous decoration, and express simplicity by reducing clothing to the essential.
The rectangular wrap is a logical outcome of this mode of reduction. In different fabrics, such as fleece, re-nylon, embroidered duchesse satin and chineĢ taffeta, the transformative wrap serves as a protection or decoration, utility or adornment.
Garments are drawn around the body, held by hand, as an innately human gesture. The addition of pockets has a deeper purpose as in that practicality, it expresses the usefulness of clothes in a dialogue with the human body.
Simons' long-term collaborator, Peter De Potter rendered artworks that reflect on the relationship between information, technology and humankind, but also, wider, of thought as first an inner monologue, then an outer dialogue, and another exchange of ideas.
As contrasting graphic tools, sometimes laid over archival Prada print, the artwork disrupts the clothing's uniform surfaces.
The Italian brand's collaboration with Rotterdam-based OMA/AMO extended to designing an intimate cyberspace for the presentation of the collection.
The virtual fashion show featured an entirely new cast of models, who made their debut along with a soundtrack by Plastikman, British-Canadian electronic musician Richie Hawtin, who included all their names in his composition.
The models walked on the runway with a yellow backdrop punctuated by chandeliers of monitors and cameras, with this staging representing a paradoxical dialogue between mankind and the photographic technology hanging from the ceiling.
