At the center of the backstage swarm, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons speak with clarity about abstraction, lightness, and the truth of clothes.
By Mackenzie Richard Zuckerman
Backstage at Prada, the crowd moved like concentric circles spiraling toward a single point: Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons. K-pop stars, film directors, art world figures, and legacy editors pressed forward, their voices rising over the hum of photographers and the steady presence of bodyguards tasked with holding the line. Yet at the center, the atmosphere was unexpectedly calm. Prada and Simons stood side by side, comfortable in each other’s company, fielding questions with the kind of direct clarity that disarms a room. They finish each other’s sentences. They look you in the eye. There’s no fuss, no drama — only vision.
“The collection is really an impression of ideas — freedom, hierarchy, and the way we experience them in the world,” Prada said, her words deliberate and measured. “Fashion is often seen hierarchically, as though some pieces are ‘more’ fashion than others. But for us, clothing can move fluidly, from something as everyday as a uniform to something as precious as jewelry. It isn’t about one moment in time or one type of garment; it’s about experimenting with flow.”
“So many of the pieces were imprints of clothing rather than garments in the traditional sense,” Prada said, her eyes narrowing with analytical curiosity, as if considering the question anew. “A top might look like a bra, but it’s really an abstraction of one. A skirt could be three, four, five panels of fabric, wrapped together. They weren’t meant to behave like conventional clothes.”
Simons picked up the thread seamlessly. His tone was softer, more reflective, tinged with that emotional intensity he’s known for. “We wanted to work with lightness,” he added. “And lightness is always difficult. Normally, a skirt clings to the body in a predictable way. Here, we wanted to resist that, to let fabric hover. It was about using what you have — a piece of fabric, nothing more — and allowing it to create movement on its own.”
Jewelry — archival Prada mixed with new pieces — carried equal weight. It wasn’t treated as decoration but as part of the uniform. “Jewelry here is integral,” Prada noted. “It’s not an accessory; it’s part of the system of dressing.”
The designers resisted framing the collection as a nostalgic gesture or even as a response to a particular cultural moment. They were matter-of-fact: this was about experimentation with fragments and abstractions, about asking new questions of familiar forms. “This is not about a single moment in time,” Simons said. “It’s not about one type of garment or construction. It’s about fragments, abstractions — and the beauty you can find in them.”
For Prada, the act of abstraction was itself deeply human — an acknowledgment of complexity and contradiction. For Simons, it was also about individuality, energy, and new ideas. Together, they kept circling back to the clothes themselves, insisting on clarity where others might seek myth.
And yet, in the calm at the center of the backstage storm, it was clear why the industry surges toward them. Prada, fearless in her intellectual curiosity, and Simons, humble in his sensitivity, are not just designers but touchstones. They speak without hesitation, without theater, and in doing so, remind us that fashion at its most compelling is not narrative but fact: a skirt of five panels, a top that is not a bra, fabric that hovers in defiance of gravity — abstractions that hold their own kind of truth.
