Prada’s origami pumps are a Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024 winner
These floral appliqué Prada pumps are an exploration of contemporary beauty, and win ‘Best Structural Sensation’
The sweet smell of lilies lingered in the air of the Prada A/W 2023 show space in February last year, their heady aroma provided by enormous floral chandeliers that hung over the otherwise industrial Deposito space at Fondazione Prada in Milan (see our highlights of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2023). Revealed in parts as the ceiling rose – some delicately dropping petals on the gathered crowd – they provided an apt backdrop for a show Miuccia Prada described as ‘finding beauty everywhere, beauty of different kinds’.
Alongside co-creative director Raf Simons, Miuccia Prada used the nurse’s uniform as a starting point, its usually clean white lines here decorated with delicate floral appliqué. ‘These typical uniform garments, connected to the everyday world, are usually seen as minor, unconsidered,’ explained Simons. ‘So for this collection, we liked the idea of considering them, celebrating them.’
Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024, best structural sensation: floral Prada pumps
Juxtaposing the quotidien with elements synonymous with celebration and matrimony – flowers, doilies, satin – the duo continued an exploration of what beauty means today. Most extraordinary of all, though, were the shoes: simple knife-point Prada pumps adorned with origami-like motifs of flowers and wings, appearing as delicate as paper, but actually crafted from leather, as if to preserve a memory. As editors trooped backstage post-show, crouching down to get a better look, they were enough to elucidate gasps of joy.
Brushed leather Prada pumps with floral appliqués (£950) are available from harrods.com.
A version of this article appears in the February 2024 issue of Wallpaper* – dedicated to the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024 – available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
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Jack Moss is the Fashion Features Editor at Wallpaper*, joining the team in 2022. Having previously been the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 and 10 Men magazines, he has also contributed to titles including i-D, Dazed, 10 Magazine, Mr Porter’s The Journal and more, while also featuring in Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik.
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