Trump and AI help inspire a Prada collection for challenging times
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‘The world has become conservative,’ says designer Miuccia Prada as Milan men’s show tries to resist the algorithm. The day before the US presidential inauguration, it was impossible for Miuccia Prada to avoid the question. When designing her collection, just how much was fashion’s most radical intellectual thinking about Donald Trump?.
![[Morwenna Ferrier]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Morwenna-Ferrier,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Speaking backstage at her show on the opening weekend of men’s fashion week in Milan, the 75-year-old designer, who grew up a communist and believed, like many of her generation, that change would come not through capitalism but through revolution, could only laugh. “Is it an answer to what is happening? Yes,” she said. “The world has become conservative.” As for the clothes, it wasn’t so much an autumn/winter 2025 collection as a riposte to “the first season of artificial intelligence”.
![[A model (pictured from waist down) wears patent red cowboy boots under pink and blue pyjama trousers, and carries a brown leather satchel-style bag]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/30f5f9ed8b3e841db02b24d6352dbf2b8ee783f0/0_50_5631_3379/master/5631.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Speaking with her co-creative director Raf Simons, by their shared admission it was a challenging collection for challenging times. There were cream pyjamas made from buttery soft leather, bright puffer jackets layered upon puffer jackets, and oversized hoods in granny-curtain fabric. If the clothes and the fabrics looked incongruous, that was deliberate – they were trying to resist the algorithm.
![[Models on the Prada runway]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/971d18e781b25276f8405bc21c0d6d4aeee6bdbc/0_159_3072_1843/master/3072.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“These are things that shouldn’t be together, coming together,” said Simons. For example, he added, the men wore jewellery but sometimes the jewellery dangled from the crew-necked jumpers or lapels. Some of them wore traditional-style cowboy boots, but more than half had bare chests. Office-friendly slacks in dark grey were paired with faux-fur tabards (Prada is fur-free), “modern man meets primal”, Simons said. Even the buckled bags, which looked battered and vintage, were held the wrong way round. Dotted wittily throughout were pyjamas worn under coats, the sort of thing you might wear for a late milk run. “When I get home, I just take it all off [and get into pyjamas],” said Simons, exhaling.
![[A bare-chested model wearing a jacket with faux-fur detailing]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f117aef49dd9437849bf9bbe22c03cf1bd777cf3/81_312_2896_1738/master/2896.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
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