Scene setting: Guests stepped into the pages of a giant graphic novel. Incomplete narratives conceived by long-time collaborators illustrator James Jean and Belgian graphic artist Ollie Schrauwen covered the walls. Backstage Miuccia Prada said that they reflected the simple fragments of everyday life. Yet they had a Darwinist demeanour; a monkey was drawn with laser beams coming out of its eyes, a dog curled up asleep in a domestic setting and elsewhere a man looked up to a cloudless sky.
Team work: Large sections of Schrauwen and Jeans’s collaboration were printed onto silk shirts, pochettes, skinny belts and knitwear. The Taiwanese American visual artist Jean first teamed up with the brand on a series of dystopian fairy prints for the S/S 2008 womenswear collection and, for S/S 2018, worked with Schrauwen on short stories that focused less on superpower and more on humanity. The beautiful herringbone wool coats that appeared throughout aren’t a clear SOS for summer dressing but Prada is exploring the many possibilities of a man’s wardrobe in its own surreal way; each is made from mohair that is deceivingly lightweight. This absence of direct narrative was inspired by our modern affliction to share stories that are full of overlapping narratives. The significance of everything is fleeting; society itself is fashion. And Prada knows it.
Best in show: A Y-shape silhouette with its bigger shoulder and narrow leg felt as retro as it did new. Lots of slim-fit coveralls were shown in a number of variations from a classic black nylon to rubberised cotton shirting. Standout were a trio of double button suits in pistachio, faded bronze and cloudy blue with thick black stripes on the inside leg.
