Prada: Logo light on a Mediterranean beach

By

Godfrey Deeny

Published
Jun 20, 2021

Light-hearted logomania at Prada, where the arrival of Raf Simons alongside Miuccia Prada has led to multiple expressions of the brand’s signature crest.

 
Most notably on Sunday in the latest menswear show video from the Milan fashion house, whose opening image was the back of a youth wearing a black nylon jerkin and golf hat, each bearing a logo – on his back the rope-enclosed logo; on the hat the signature inverted triangular metallic version. When seen from the front, the model completed his look with micro shorts, black socks and matching town-shoes.
 
The next look, topped by a samurai version of the golfer hat, also boasted a pocket logo at the back. Over-the-shoulder bags – in a cut reminiscent of As Four – came embossed with a blown-up logo – Prada Milano.

Indeed, the overriding message was logos – seen on mini leather bucket totes, pink sweatshirts, and miniature cable-knit breastplate sweaters. One recalls that in Raf’s first collab with Miuccia, they turned the logo triangle into an earring.

 
When it came to tailoring, the jackets were far less abbreviated – so much so that they ended well below the micro shorts with which they were paired.
 
Back when she was still a single designer, Miuccia preferred multicultural musical mashups courtesy of sound architect Frédéric Sanchez. Now that she is hitched up with Simons, a fan of techno, the soundtrack this season was gurgling industrial beats. Which somehow did not seem terribly Prada.

In a great visual sleight of hand, the cast initially marched in a brick red passage, before suddenly exiting this temporary work of land art and strolling onto a Mediterranean beach. Again the key look was micro shorts worn beneath Super 100 wool blazers – rolled up to the elbow, disco dragoon style. Just weeks after Netflix paid homage to Halston with the launch of its new series.

Highlights for Spring/Summer 2022 at Prada included rather divine leather after-hours rock-star biker jackets in yellow or red; a great series of stencil-pattern summer shirts, and graphic beach party tops, worn with matching fabric bags and loafers. Which the boys then wore into the sea, jumping about on bright red floating docks in the water.

 
All told, this was a perfectly competent collection, which felt, however, as if it were made by two designers trying too hard to be commercial. Quite frankly, the concept of marrying two such major fashion design leaders as Miuccia and Raf has not led to any kind of explosion of ideas, more a plethora of logos. The creative yeast has still yet to really rise in their collective cake.
 
As a result, the show and collection felt, well, rather flat.