RAF'S PRADA SULLIES TWO LEGACIES
The revered designer's latest collection for the Italian brand is another strange and unsuccessful turn.
Raf Simons and Prada have one thing in common: it’s verboten to criticize either. An air of intellectualism (real or imagined) blended with the rightful acknowledgment that both parties have created generation-defining fashion tends to insulate them from such things. Yet Simons’ latest show for the Milanese brand served as further evidence that not only is the creative pairing of him and Miuccia Prada a bad one but that Simons has lost his touch.
Consisting of 56 looks, the collection superficially cherry-picked Prada elements – a touch of fur at the collar, slashes of ice blue, felted wool outerwear – and rendered them with an awkwardness that began as intentional before going off the rails. The silhouettes vacillated between shrunken and oversized, both to uncomfortable visual effect. The lineup read more Raf than Prada, a theme that has intensified with each of Simons’ successive runway shows for the house.
Simons has a very narrow fashionscape in which he can navigate tastefully, and he often leans on his team even more than the typical designer to make things work. As just one example, Patrick van Ommeslaeghe’s heading of the design studio at Jil Sander was pivotal to Simons’ acclaimed tenure there and made it possible for Simons to catapult to the top job at Dior despite never having headed a brand even approaching its size. After van Ommeslaeghe’s departure and Simons’ first couple of shows for the French couture house – which were sublime – his collections quickly fell off for lack of that guidance, becoming a mess of chunky sci-fi sneakers and overwrought Edwardian references. All this to say that Simons has a habit of starting strong when occupying a new role before quickly fumbling the ball, creatively and in terms of sales (yet somehow still manages to keep getting hired for bigger and bigger jobs). I believe that cycle is repeating itself at Prada.
What is perhaps most upsetting about the entire exercise is how much Prada now feels like Raf rather than Miuccia. In making that so, I think Simons is at risk of tarnishing his own legacy along with what could be the last few active years of Miuccia’s reign. Then again, that would require the fashion community to be as honest in their assessments of the brand publicly as they are privately when communicating with me.
With Simons monopolizing the Prada sensibility, Miuccia was left to focus on Miu Miu, resulting in a blockbuster run imbued with her singular taste that has everyone clamoring to buy a piece of it. Both Miuccia and Raf are conceptual designers, but one of the things that makes Miuccia so superior in my estimation is that her conceptualism never gets in the way of making actual clothes people want to wear. As directional as they may first appear, once each look is broken down, her designs are eminently wearable. The same cannot be said of Simons.
Fashion, particularly runway fashion, is given some leeway in terms of its wearability with the assumption that the real proposition being made is at least somewhat elevated for the sake of presentation and expression. I can’t be so generous here as most of the looks are not only not desirable, they are flatly ridiculous, offensively leaden, and as a friend of mine who’s led the workrooms for some of New York’s top designers for more than 30 years said to me, “Nobody wants to look like what [Simons] is offering. Nobody…Who would take any man who looks like that seriously?” I can’t sum it up any better than that.
Thanks, Martin. Someone had to say it. I've often wondered how Raf always lands on his feet after spectacular failures. What he did to Calvin was a crime. The fashion press has been asleep at the wheel for a while now. The industry needs honest critiques of shows instead of the light reportage we have now. This is the first intelligent review I've read in a long time.
The honesty with which this is written is so needed in our industry. The silence is destroying any possibility of new, actually talented designers taking the reins of a house where they could get their grounding and eventually receive proper backing for an eponymous label. Not the other way around a’la the proenza boys. It is time for this industry to actually invest in up and coming talent. Mentor them and allow they to learn the business