Prada’s Milan runway offers the freedom to compose looks beyond fashion’s conventions

MILAN (AP) — Prada’s cavernous showroom was awash in bright orange paint Thursday for a women’s collection that swerved from cocooning to revealing, rigorous to feminine.

Co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons continued their meditation on the uniform, but here they invited women to throw caution to the wind, and pair bright opera gloves with coveralls, the kind a mechanic with sartorial sense might wear.

“We thought a lot about the idea of freedom, freedom in the way you dress,’’ Simons said backstage.

The Prada toolbox

The runway was therefore a toolbox of elements to compose individual looks without regard for conventions of masculinity or femininity, whether colors match or silhouettes jibe.

“Juxtaposition here becomes an act of creation,” the designers said in show notes.

Skirts were composed of multiple panels — pink ruffles in the back, gray pleats in the front and black panels on the side— that could be mixed and layered for a personalized look.

They could be paired with unstructured bralettes that hovered over the bodice, or structured folkloric dirndls layered over more rigorous uniform shirts in an unexpected bright pink.

Any combination could be pulled together with a plunging slip-like pinafore, a sort of unifying object that was not so much worn as suspended.

Neat uniform tops also tucked into crumpled bubble skirts. And crumpled bubble skirts acted as a bustle under Mad Men-era taffeta tea dresses.

Prada said the collection is about “clothes to wear now,’’ so identifying a silhouette from another era – like skirts that had a 1950s flair — would seem to defy that claim. It’s there that the endless and seamless combinations make it all contemporary.

Beyond the runway

The designers were thoughtful about presenting a collection at a moment of global tensions.

“The world is so hostile right now but there is also a lot of beauty and you have to deal with both things,” Simons told journalists.

Front row

The K-pop boy band Enhypen drew K-pop fans to the Prada Foundation show venue. But they attracted just as much attention inside, requiring security to form a cordon around them as professional photographers and fashionistas with smartphones alike recorded the moment.

Actors Kerry Washington, Sadie Sink, Felicity Jones, singer Nia Smith and U.S. influencer Charli D’Amelio also had front row seats to the show.