Prada’s A/W 2026 menswear show was about excavating the past to find the future

Raf Simons likened his and Miuccia Prada’s latest menswear collection to a kind of ‘archaeology’. ‘There is a lot here from the past,’ he said backstage. ‘If you take the layers away, you always find a kind of beauty. There’s the knowledge that you still want to celebrate and use, but you also want to innovate.’

The show took place in Fondazione Prada’s hangar-like Deposito space, which this season had been transformed by OMA into the ruins of an Italian palazzo. Though there was no dust or rubble; instead, it was as if the various floors had been neatly cut away to reveal a cross-section of the rooms inside (in typical Prada style, they were painted in pastel shades and were installed with wood-panelling and marble fireplaces, suspended at height around the room). Only the jagged remains of ceiling beams and floorboards were evidence of any destruction having happened before.

Prada A/W 2026 menswear: ‘What should remain from the past?’

Perhaps, then, this was a collection not of archaeology but of renovation: to make something that exists new, what do you keep, and what do you strip away? Or, as Simons elaborated: ‘We questioned what should remain, from the past – and what can you build, from what you learn?’ For the A/W 2026 collection, this meant a series of archetypal pieces skewed in proportion and intriguingly layered: the formal shirt (here, cuffs were blown up in size and emerged from the skinny sleeves of narrow overcoats), the double-breasted suit (like the outerwear, tailoring was ultra-narrow in construction), or the mackintosh jacket (raincoats came with vivid overlays across the shoulders and jaunty matching sou’wester hats).

‘It’s a moment of really big change,’ said Mrs Prada, noting the ‘uncomfortable’ political climate which backdrops the show. ‘Who knows the future? So [you have to think about] what you want to keep. What can you transform?’

‘Think about the businessman, or the politician’s, shirt in this moment,’ added Simons. ‘You can transform that in two steps, in three steps, in four steps – what if you made the stripes horizontal? What is you gave it a T-shirt neckline? What if you age it? It’s about transforming things that you respect and love. Maybe they have the wrong connotation at a certain moment of time, when we don’t want that American corporate, masculine power. But what if you make it young, make it in beautiful colours?’

Other elements were treated to appear as if already worn: shirt cuffs were gently stained and soiled, leather outerwear was creased and crumpled across its surface, while another fabric was peeled away in patches to reveal houndstooth beneath, like removing a layer of wallpaper. Prints had a similar feel: ‘they are collages of a lot of different things, Delft tiles, landscapes, broken finds from Egypt and Greece,’ said Simons. Meanwhile, smaller details – colourful laces on footwear, wallets stuffed into too-small back pockets, tie-fastening belts – suggested moments of personal expression and style.

But there were no easy answers here: Prada has long abandoned tidy thematics or easy explanations – across Miuccia Prada’s career, she has preferred the clothing to speak for itself (and, indeed, set those watching her runway shows the challenge of thinking for themselves). ‘I have always liked that from the very start, Miuccia’s work has been about challenging, questioning and investigating. That idea inspires, that reference to a tradition of Prada,’ said Simons.

‘[The role of the designer] is to be uncomfortable,’ she added. ‘To be honest, to do my job seriously, to try and make the best possible. I stay intellectually honest by saying that we have to do our job the best we can, to bring creativity, understanding. This is our profession: going out and working, searching, respecting.’ And if it takes digging up the floorboards to find answers? Well, that’s just the Prada way.

prada.com