Prada looks at the anniversary of the Ukraine invasion for Fall/Winter 2023
One year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Prada revisits alternative realities with new context.
Co-creative directors Raf Simons and Miuccia Prada, both revolutionaries in their own rights, have once again defied conventions and redefined the beautiful. The Prada brand has long been “ugly chic,” sophisticated with an unusual flare. Playing with paradoxes, this season was no different.
One year ago today, Prada showed their Fall/Winter 2022 collection just as news surfaced of Russia invading Ukraine. In light of so much uncertainty, where did fashion stand? Did it even matter? Prada’s Fall/Winter 2023 collection is a nod to unsung heroes— the troops and nurses—who put fashion into a new context. Elevating the everyday, Simons and Prada reinvented the uniform to honour the extraordinary courage of those who wear them.
Prada's previous collection was about reality and irreality, a sequence of alternative, and at times, disharmonious, perspectives. Perhaps a metaphor both for the world of fashion versus current events, as well as their separate visions of the brand, Simons and Prada revisited the concept of alternative realities, but this time, mindful of pressing issues.
The Italian label aptly showed in Milan inside a cavernous industrial building. Gloomy concrete floors juxtaposed coral posts crowned with vegetation. The imperfect and sporadic quality of life was evidenced in cloth shaped every which way. Irregular but intentional twists and rifts of familiar silhouettes upended the classical.
Although certain key elements persisted throughout—trapezoidal bags, three-dimensional accents, and mannish shoulders—the collection’s beauty was in its incongruity and variation, both in colour palette and in silhouette. Seemingly dissonant combinations such as pale peachy pink, army green, and teal broke from the predominating neutrals. Oversized blazers lay over top entirely unbuttoned dress shirts, exposing a vertical line down the torso, making looks appear ready for fall whilst still mused by spring.
Although white skirts were a constant, they too varied substantially: some were crafted of an immobile puffer material while others had flowing trains, some were barren whilst others featured ample embroidery of natural motifs. This imagery — particularly the rosettes — is an updated thread line from Prada’s previous collection and was featured mostly on pointed, geometric shoes with extending wings.
