Every season, one collection captures both the moment and a convincing vision of where fashion will go next. With the spring ’27 shows nearly over, it’s almost certain which one it was. Despite the fastidious efforts of many a marketing department to turn your attention elsewhere, it was, in fact, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons’s radically disciplined, skirt-tastic outing that reverberated furthest, and the industry, at least unconsciously, seems to agree. Among this season’s many, er, homages, Marni’s, Mulberry’s and Burberry’s were especially noticeable. The collective unconscious may be to blame, though it is likelier that Prada’s design philosophy is just more relevant than ever.
That kind of staying power is rare. Designers who define an era usually get defined by it, and age along with it. Prada has stayed at or near the front since the mid-1990s, through recessions, logo booms, minimalism, quiet luxury, and the wholesale re-invention of how fashion is made, shown, and sold. The clothes explain some of it: prim, intellectual yet sensual, jolie yet laide, unapologetic, and, this season, deceptively straightforward. The rest has to do with where Miuccia Prada has always stood.