It was confirmed last week that the Prada Marfa installation is staying for good, so it’s no wonder that Miuccia Prada, in turn, brought the desert to Milan for spring. In doing so, her team organized the importation of 150 tons of lilac-colored sand, transforming the catwalk into high-fashion dunes that staged an eerie feeling of abandonment.
The Marfa installation was proposed to be left untouched and abandoned, too, effaced by sloughs of sand and vandal passerby. However, with recent defacements, the landmark structure is kept under supervised grooming, and this is what Prada has displayed with her collection for spring/summer 2015—that immaculate, yet weathered girl. A survivor of a catastrophe, some have coined.
Prada spring/summer 2015
The opening look worn by the revived super-model-lifer, Gemma Ward, was a continuation of spring/summer menswear: a clean-cut, double-breasted coat with heavy topstitching. Though, by Look 4, things had already begun to unravel—literally. Unfinished hems straggling loose threads were visible on the most luxe fabrics of brocade, raw linen, and leather. If you can believe it, this made the Prada girl seem almost desolate, but in the most desirable way.
Furthermore, the clothes expanded into variations of these fine fabrics, scrapped and pieced together like American quilting. This provided a strong sense of upholstery. Some fabrics even appeared to have been ripped from vintage seats and reproportioned into garment form. Moreover, maiden clogs were elevated about six inches, worn with dainty stockings.
Prada spring/summer 2015
Perhaps this was the “confrontation with antiquity” that Mrs. Prada discussed with press—recontextualizing your grandma’s décor to fashion the woman of today. Although the setting for this show may imply desertion, Prada is not abandoning anything at all; rather, she is reviving the old to make new.
