The power of reality, in a world of the imaginary. The Prada Spring/Summer 2025 menswear collection by Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons offers a discourse around contemporary notions of truth and pretence, the real and unreal. Here, we are encouraged to question the actuality of what we perceive, to reconsider, to look at things closer.
Closeness reflects emotion – the human urge for proximity, to share space and commune. To be closer also shifts perception. Viewed from afar, pieces can pretend to be other – details may seem simplistic, naïve, but up-close, physically, perceptions transform. Clothes with wired details animate collars and hems with an unreal dynamism, as if alive themselves. Purposefully creased, patinated, aged, garments bear traces of time – imperfection another sign of living, of reality.
Pieces stolen from father or mother sit differently on the body. Exaggerated proportions, deliberately long or cropped, are instinctively combined – a superhero sweater transposed to a new context. Bernard Buffet paintings appear, printed like a concert t-shirt. Items from different origins are juxtaposed in unanticipated contrasts, but with consideration, a deliberate and careful spontaneity.
There is a spirit of freedom, of youthful optimism and energy. In a fairytale ravescape invented within the Deposito of the Fondazione Prada, people are brought together. A hut, the simplest structure, stands nearby as a totem of the essential, the necessary, the real, reflected in clothes that are uncontrived and direct. A utopian conceit, here the imaginary can propose a new reality.
It was left to the collection to make you doubt you were always seeing things entirely straight. […] Both Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons suggested that they were both inspired by and working to appeal to the directness, innocence and purpose of youthful intent.
Vogue Runway, Luke Leitch
Prada celebrates gen Z with show driven by youth spirit. Purposefully creased suiting and exaggerated proportions, including long trousers and jackets with cropped sleeves alongside aged leathers, reflected imperfection, another sign of living, of reality.
The Guardian, Chloe Mac Donnell
The invitation is to observe things more closely to understand what they really are: “Closer,” then, the power of reality. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons push the accelerator in search of the truth, theirs of course, about fashion.
Corriere della Sera, Paola Pollo
It is a world of young people that fashion seems to be moving towards. Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons certainly see it that way […] the turnaround, as often happens, starts from the past, i.e. from the closets of mom and dad, which are taken up here and extremely simplified through trompe l’oeil. The heavy tweed pants are actually painted cotton, the vest shirts are actually thin thread sweaters with buttons sewn on, while the more formal suits still show the creases and stains of those who wore them “before.”
La Repubblica, Serena Tibaldi