Fashion in 2026 is all about noise. Between disposable micro-trends, manufactured celebrity culture, and Gen Z’s newfound archive obsession, it feels as though everything is happening all at once. Prada appears to have lost patience with it.
For SS27, co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons have designed a collection based on the premise that fashion has lost its way. Their solution? A return to fundamentals. But don’t mistake this for simple minimalism — condolences to those still yearning for Simons’ pristine days at Jil Sander.
It’s about clothes that can work for anyone, though that sounds like a contradiction seeing how small some of the models were. The matter of fact is, these are clothes that aren’t offensive or disruptive. They are so languid in form that gender no longer becomes a constraint.
The collection opened with a pigtailed Julia Nobis in slimline white denim and an oversized blazer, followed by her doppelgänger male model in a similar ensemble.
The collection is also heavily anchored in the 1980s, evident in the Atari-esque teaser, the colour palettes, the motifs, and the hair. But why? It represents a shared archival memory for both designers — the decade where Mrs. Prada established her footing in the industry, and for Simons, a formative era of youth liberation and defiance seen through his eyes.
The late 1980s also harboured a specific maximalism, and therein lies the point. The cultural noise of that era mirrors our own today, proving that the old platitude “fashion moves in circles” remains undefeated. And what, after all, was the antidote to that 1980s noise? It was Calvin Klein and Jil Sander quietly perfecting the less-is-more approach that would inevitably explode in the 1990s.
The solution is less about the technical and more about optimisation. Nothing from the collection will pair badly together. Translucent pieces may look like a lewd allegory on the runway, but they operate as blank screens upon which you’re meant to display your own ideas. Layer something of colour underneath, and the piece transforms and becomes anew.
That contrast creates the statement for today: we don’t need to constantly demand a grand, intellectual thesis from clothes. Yes, you’ve seen things in the collection from before, repeated over and over again, but that doesn’t mean it lacks value. Nothing speaks to good design more than the fact that it will actually be worn — even for an intellectual house like Prada. Thus, the idea, again, is that anyone should have the ability to wear these clothes.
Given the sheer volume of slop we’re currently accustomed to, are we really surprised that this less-is-more attitude is the direction we’re heading? Prada certainly doesn’t think we need more.
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