The architecture at Prada’s showroom shifts with every season, but never so fluidly as for Spring-Summer 2024 menswear.
The collection was viewed through a wall of clear falling slime — a form of fluid architecture — that gathered on the metallic grate runway in piles of green foam. The moving architecture was a metaphor for a collection that was meant to express the fluidity of menswear.
Some highlights from the third day of Milan Fashion Week of mostly menswear runway shows for next spring and summer:
PRADA EXPLORES FLUIDITY
Prada explores the fluidity of menswear, through a 1940s workwear tailored silhouette that is at the same time liberating.
Co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons said they were experimenting with the idea of a fluid architecture that animates the male form, never constricting.
The collection’s building blocks are the white shirt, mid-thigh shorts, black socks and thick-soled shiny loafers. Clothes for real men, the collection also includes jeans, blazers and raincoats. The look can be layered with a reporter’s vest. Leather bags are soft, with decorative pockets.
The textiles are super-light, allowing button-down shirts or jackets to be tucked neatly into shorts, which are gathered at the waist, emphasizing an idealized male form: wide shoulders, narrow waist.
“We were very interested to see how we could liberate that, in the sense you had a lot of freedom to move,” Simons said.
Hawaiian-inspired prints of sci-fi dragons were curtained with a long fringe, creating motion. Pockets on a reporter’s vest were more decorative than utilitarian, the designers said. Looks were finished with molded eyewear and headbands, conveying a kinetic energy.
CHARLES JEFFREY LOVERBOY PROPOSES NEW CAROLEAN ERA
British designer Charles Jeffrey proposed a joyful Loverboy collection for a new Carolean era in Britain driven by the people and inspired by the tumultuous season when King Charles III ascended the throne amid political turmoil.
“I wanted to reclaim that space. I decided to do my own counterculture,” Jeffrey said backstage. “I looked at the previous Carolean era of the 17th century: the reformation of the monarchy, the opening of theaters, arts and culture, new Romanticism.”
Like the new Romantics, Jeffrey used costume “to depict euphoria, to depict a better life.”
The designer used Loverboy’s design codes of tartan, tailoring and knitwear and combined them with what he called “joyful slapstick accessories.” They included a fanciful shield and sword decorated with classical figures, and tricorn hats adorned with scenes from Carolean theater created with paper dolls.
Look included fluorescent yellow bloomers, a maiden’s bustled dress with an AI-created floral pattern, a knight’s armor transposed on to athletic running gear, and a barrel dress created from fabric strips belted together. The brand’s leather claw shoes finished many looks.
“They are a depiction of what the Carolean era should be: Free education, gay rights, women’s rights free borders,” Jeffrey said backstage.
