When considering notions of beauty, the first thing that comes to mind is aesthetic pleasure, perhaps you’re considering a beautiful dress, a landscape, or a work of art. However, for Prada’s Fall-Winter 2023 womenswear collection, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons reconceptualize, reconsider, and ultimately rediscover ideas of beauty.
Beauty, here, is not determined by the aesthetic, but instead by actions, by taking care of oneself. The two designers find beauty in actions of care, love, and reality. A year to the day when Ukraine was invaded, and Prada’s 2022 Milan show was in doubt, the notions of beauty in actions of care seemed a fitting tribute.
For its FW/23 show, Prada has redressed its purpose, where significance is afforded to clothing to express these fundamental ideas. In the collection, uniforms come as a sartorial representation of care and responsibility, which has been aesthetically transformed by the use of eveningwear. The ultimate signifier of love and purity, the wedding dress, is transformed into everyday attire, where its skirts are worn with sweaters to form a new form of quotidian dress. This play on everyday wear and occasion wear, the familiar and the exceptional, turns our preconceptions on their heads and provides a new take on the everyday and the exceptional.
At Prada, the body is protected through clothing, which suggests a tender concern and a desire for safekeeping. Here, classically tailored outerwear is reshaped through cocooning volumes, while leather and suede pieces draw inspiration from protective gear.
The Deposito of the Fondazione Prada also underwent a form of transformation, where a moving ceiling – a reiteration of the décor of its January menswear show – reengineered the dimensions of the room by alternatively amplifying and reducing the room. This process of contraction and expansion of the space ultimately uncovers a floral decoration that was previously concealed within the building’s industrial form. Its revelation is another point that prompts one to reconsider both space and the figures that move within it, coming perhaps to a new point of view.
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